


magical prophecies for miserable people

by blueparacosm



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 69,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26419852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: Murphy is cursed. Anything that ever made him happy is ripped away until he has nothing left to lose. Intent on burning the thirteen kingdoms to ashes, he travels to Arkadia, where sorcerers like him are put to death. Then he meets the royal jackass Prince Bellamy, the mad woman Lady Octavia, and a dragon— yes, a fucking dragon— who believes he and the prince are destined to unite the kingdoms and save magickind, together.Yeah, that'll happen.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy
Comments: 24
Kudos: 90





	1. one

The day Murphy’s very last friend died was like all the rest of them; sunny, quiet, and utterly sure of itself.

He and Mbege lay on a shady tuft of grass just past the southwestern border of Arkadia, with the Kingdom of Light, the land from which the two of them so unfortunately hailed, at their backs.

“Show me a dragon,” said Mbege, crunching from his apple and staring up at the sky. Murphy shook his head and smiled, twirling a finger and shifting the cloud overhead into shape.

The dragon in the sky bowed its head, puffed out a few little clouds of smoke, and slowly flapped a great white wing before curling its massive tail around itself and falling asleep. Murphy laid his hand on his belly and the cloud lost shape, slowly dissolving into an unsuspecting clump of fluff again.

“Couldn’t make it fly around?” complained Mbege.

“You want all the knights of Arkadia to come down here?” Murphy scoffed, looking incredulously at Mbege as he ate his apple and stayed staring untroubled at the sky. “Sorry for the blatant display of illegal magic over the heads of all thirteen kingdoms, sirs. My friend here wanted to see the fucking dragon fly.”

“Well ya don’t have to be mean about it,” Mbege muttered in that soft voice of his, but Murphy knew he didn’t really mind his meanness, or he wouldn’t have stuck around so long. Especially since he must have noticed by now that Murphy was cursed. That everything Murphy touched died.

He made a doe of clouds and a little fawn, too, and grinned as Mbege laughed, elbowing Murphy in the side as the animals dipped their heads and grazed on blue sky. “You just want to see pretty things ‘stead of anything cool.”

“What? Like a giant, flying dragon breathing fire and doing loop-de-loops?”

Mbege pouted. “Or somethin’ like that.”

They lay on their patch of grass a while longer, resting up before they started wearing blisters in their heels again, stalking the Arkadian woods.

Seemed they weren’t the only ones stalking those woods that day, and the boys sat up in alarm as a tumble of hooves closed in on them, both of them rushing to gather their boots and their rucksacks before the band of stallions arrived. Whether it be a team of bandits or a patrol, Murphy and Mbege would be shit out of luck.

Of course, thanks to Murphy, they were _always_ shit out of luck.

“Halt!” cried one of the men as the hooves stopped pounding up dust, and the boys froze with their hands in the air. Murphy cringed as the contents of his rucksack clinked and chimed where the bulk of the bag came to rest at his upper arm.

“We don’t want no trouble,” Mbege said, and Murphy peeked over his shoulder and withered as he caught eye of glimmering chainmail and cobalt capes. They were so, totally screwed.

“By order of the queen we’re searching the western woods for a pair of thieves. You two fit the description. You’ll allow us to inspect your bags. Sir Myles,” said the knight, pointing a gloved finger at Murphy’s rucksack.

“Gentlemen, let’s talk this out, shall we?” Murphy offered, watching Mbege slowly inch a dagger out from his tunic sleeve into his palm, like it’d be any use against the polished swords of eight trained knights of Arkadia. Idiot.

Murphy couldn’t blame him. He was probably right to be antsy after how poorly their run-ins with bandits, Thelonious’ knights, and others of the unfriendly sort had always turned out over the years. He just hoped Mbege would give him a chance to try and get them out of this unharmed, first.

The knight, Sir Myles, tugged at the rucksack choked in Murphy’s fist. He instinctively held onto it, and grimaced as Sir Myles leveled him with an unamused look and yanked hard, tugging it free.

Murphy stared at the top of Sir Myles’ head as he peered into the bag and said, “It’s the potions, Sir Connor.”

Murphy couldn’t do magic in front of the knights. Practicing magic was a crime punishable only by death in Arkadia; they’d never stop searching for Murphy. But maybe if they abandoned the healer’s potions and ran, Murphy could use his magic once they were out of sight and put some distance between them and the knights. And maybe, since they’d gotten their tinctures and tonics back, they’d leave Murphy and Mbege be.

As Sir Myles returned to the horses, two more men made to dismount, ropes in hand to arrest them. Murphy took a step back, and then another, and then grabbed Mbege by the elbow and ran.

It was just a couple of potions, was all. They saw the healer woman traveling alone with a few bags at her saddle, and Murphy and Mbege needed some proper shelter, some proper food, needed one article of clothing a piece without holes in them. She rode a beautiful speckled mare, so they knew the woman was already well-off. Doing much better than the two of them, at least. They didn’t hurt her, didn’t take everything, not even the mare. Just some medicine. That’s all.

Mbege went down not very far at all from their shady tuft of grass. Murphy stumbled, turning, taking clumsy steps backwards as he stared at Mbege’s body facedown in the grass, a crossbow bolt in the back of his neck. Betrayed, he looked up and found the knights were charging him, all eight of them in their shiny armor and their bright blue capes.

They must have thought they were heroes, shooting a boy down for a couple of bottles of medicine.

An animalistic noise of grief and rage tore from Murphy, and with a raised hand that had moments before been sculpting fawns of cloud, he whipped the men across the clearing like unwanted dolls. 

Their skulls cracked against tree trunks and stone buried beneath too-thin moss. One of the knights’ legs dangled from his saddle, his boot having been caught in the stirrups. The rest of him, torn off from the bone, was left to bleed out on the forest floor, staring up at the sunny blue sky. A kindness not spared for Mbege, who so loved the clouds.

Murphy fell to his knees at his side, easing the bolt out of his neck with a trembling tendril of magic. It was no matter that Murphy wasn’t any good at healing. It was no matter that Murphy hadn’t thought of any soothing words to say. 

His only friend in the world was dead before he hit the ground.

☆☆☆

Murphy took Mbege to the lake where he lay all his friends to rest.

He picked daisies from the edge of the forest and placed them where Mbege’s collarbones met, the yellow anthers and white petals covering the ugly wound. He waded out with Mbege’s body, floating him on his back into deeper waters and sending him off with a gentle push.

The sun beat down on Murphy’s neck, sweat beading everywhere that his wet tunic and breeches weren’t clinging to him. He stood in waist-deep water until the spirit rose out from the depths, taking Mbege’s temples gently between her hands as he floated into her path.

“So many,” Gaia said, pearls of water rolling down her forehead and cheeks. Murphy didn’t speak, watching as she smoothed a long finger over the angles of Mbege’s face. “I will take care of this one, too.”

Then Gaia took Mbege gently by the shoulders, pushing him beneath the surface. The emerald waters folded over him, lapping softly at the shape of his body until it vanished beneath the ripples, a tentative rose of blood swirling just at Gaia’s waist before soon dissipating, leaving just five daisies floating in its place.

The spirit watched Murphy glare at the flowers, earthen eyes unmoved. “What will you do, sad little sorcerer?” she asked. She always called him that, every time he came crying with another body, wanting the spirit to put them to rest in the nice way she did.

“I’ll burn it all down,” said the sad little sorcerer.

☆☆☆

Murphy never believed in fate, or destiny, or anything of the sort. But it felt something like destiny as he passed through the towering gates of Arkadia, prepared to set fire to the castle.

After that, he’d burn every last one of the other twelve kingdoms of Earth. The Ice Kingdom, the Kingdom of Light, Eligius, Sanctum, Bardo, on and on until it was all gone, razed to the ground. They’d start from scratch, just the common people. No men in shining armor and cobalt capes. No women in silk and no men in crowns.

Cobblestone fell away under Murphy’s boots, his sights set on the great stone castle and all its turrets and battlements. Men lived in there, sleeping in beds the size of houses and stuffing themselves with cakes while the rest of them toiled away in crumbling cottages and split a bowl of gruel between the three of them and ached with a terrible disease. While they died for potions and magic tricks; died every day for nothing.

Murphy only wished his destiny had been whispered in his ear, or he’d been sent following petals on the wind. Instead he had been forever walking a path paved with ash, the bones rolling under heel.

The markets of Arkadia were packed with merchants and peddlers and buyers of all kinds, pleased noblewomen purchasing pointless scarves and impractical jewelry, peasant children peeking at booths full of things they would never be able to afford before being shooed away. A scruffy gray dog trotted at Murphy’s heels for a while, thin about the ribs, before bounding off after a cricket.

Banners in shades of blue, each marked with the Blake family crest— a white, downward-pointing sword twined by a thorny vine— flapped overhead on strings crossed between taverns and inns and shops. A bard was spinning a free tale on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard, children kneeling on the stones below him with their little faces stretched in awe. Someone was plucking a pretty tune on a lyre, somewhere.

Murphy felt his convictions weaken, thinking of all this going up in flames. The people who lived within the city walls weren’t all rich bastards. They’d have to rebuild their homes elsewhere, might lose meaningful possessions, may be unsuited to a life of farming or otherwise toiling, should Murphy destroy all the taverns and inns and shops.

He stood frowning up at the great castle, and then turned on his heel, deciding that his plan needed more… anything, first. He could think on it, come up with something better, smarter.

Upon turning, Murphy immediately bumped into some poor girl on a crutch, who let go of one of the bags that were just barely being clutched beneath white-tipped fingers on the crutch’s handle.

“Sorry,” she said, staring unhappily at the bag that had spilled out bundles of herbs and empty vials, some of which sounded like they had cracked. Murphy realized belatedly that she couldn’t have picked them up if she tried, and kneeled to gather them for her.

“My fault,” he murmured, stuffing her strong-smelling herbs and surviving vials into the pouch and guiltily closed the drawstring around it, the edges of broken glass poking through the cloth.

“Not at all,” she insisted, “Look at me!”

Murphy did, inspecting the girl’s frizzy blonde hair and the sweat beading at her temples, as she attempted to trek the kingdom in the thick of summer with a bad leg. “I don’t know how Raven does it,” she moaned. “I’m exhausted.”  


Murphy rose and stared at the bag in his hands, imagined trying to tuck it back beneath the girl’s pink fingers, and sighed. “I suppose I should help you.”

“Oh, would you?” the girl asked, expression hopeful. “Come on, just up here,” she said without waiting for an answer, shoving her other bag at him and limping forward on her crutch. “I’ll owe you one.”

Murphy trailed after her sullenly, only stopping once they’d gone beyond the edge of the buildings in the courtyard and were dwarfed by the white castle. “Just to my mother’s quarters,” said the girl, smiling welcomingly over her shoulder. “The guards won’t give you any trouble, don’t worry.”

Warily, Murphy followed, feeling increasingly meek as he was swallowed up by the castle that, mere moments ago, he’d had his mind set on storming and setting aflame. The castle of Arkadia, which felt like a living being, now, who Murphy had squared up to and quickly found himself outmatched by.

“I’m Clarke,” said the girl on the crutch, and then started yammering on about the fast-approaching midsummer festival, oblivious as Murphy stared wide-eyed at the tremendous walls, the stained glass windows, the looming banners. He ducked out of the way as servants and guards flurried by, and as knights and assorted noble folk swept elegantly past. The castle was not a house, but a village.

“Never been inside the castle?” Clarke wondered, having since said her piece about how atrociously some of the bards acted during feasts— _“Burping and farting and all sorts of disgusting things!”_ — and run out of breath at last.

“Never seen a castle,” admitted Murphy, peering into a basket of exotic fruits he’d also never seen before as a kitchen maid rushed by, hugging it to her chest.

“Where are you from?” asked Clarke, turning yet another corner in the endless castle.

Murphy sniffed, trying to hide his displeasure with the question, and wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist. “Just a cottage. Easternmost edge of Thelonious’ kingdom.”

“Not a village?”

“Self-sufficient,” Murphy said, trying to sound proud, though he knew quite well their isolation hadn’t been on account of wanting some peace and quiet.

“That sounds nice,” Clarke said dreamily, smiling over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind getting away for a while.”

Murphy made a noncommittal noise, staring down at the beautiful, smooth stone disappearing underneath his boots. He thought of a tiny cottage with dirt floors, scattered with hay fallen loose from their cots, and felt guilty for even standing on stone. Felt guilty for being alive.

Why? Why everyone but _him?_

“Oh—“ Clarke blurted suddenly, and then fumbled as if she were trying to remember his name, and _then_ seemed as if she were going to reach for him, but couldn’t let go of her crutch. Before Murphy thought to look up and see what she was panicking about, it was already too late.

His head knocked into the man’s chin, who struck Murphy in the chest by thrusting out a bent arm to keep him away, which Murphy instinctively reached out and shoved.

“Watch where you’re going, numbskull!” he barked, tightening his grip on the bags and righting himself.

“Oh gods,” Clarke squeaked.

Again, too little too late, Murphy finally looked at the man he’d insulted. Up, from his polished boots to the scabbard on his belt, from his fine black tunic to the silver, single-point circlet half-hidden in a bloom of dark curls.

“Is that any way to speak to your prince?”

Murphy swallowed, and then darkened. Unlike everyone else under the thumb of arrogant, greedy, _spoiled_ royals, he had nothing left to lose.

“I’m sorry,” he spat. “Watch where you’re going, your _highness.”_

The prince’s eyes widened, just barely.

“Your highness, I am so sorry,” Clarke started, grabbing Murphy by the scruff of his neck and reeling him toward her like an unruly dog. “He’s just a boy from the country. He’s never even seen a castle. In fact, I think he might be touched in the head, sire.”

“I’ll touch _you_ in the head,” he growled, but Clarke only tilted her head at him as if begrudgingly fond, making a show of it.

The prince looked between them a moment, long enough for Murphy to glare at his stupid, smooth skin peppered with stupid, charming freckles. He was tanned and muscular and even had a small scar cutting through the edge of his lips, and looked as if he worked long hours in the sun rather than sleeping in a bed the size of a house and stuffing himself with cakes. He was a terrible prince; he’d look nothing like one without his circlet. Then he shook his head, removing his hand from the pommel of his sword and strutting off without a word.

Murphy sneered as Clarke leveled him with an admonishing look, limping forward and urging them on toward the staircase. Murphy glanced over his shoulder one last time before they descended, and found the prince staring back. His royal numbskull whipped his head around as soon as he noticed Murphy looking, storming off as if he had very important and troubling business to attend to, and hadn’t been standing there watching them go.

“The prince is weird.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t think very highly of you, either,” Clarke scolded, but it only made Murphy feel tickled. “Come on. If he’s sending guards to arrest you I’d rather it be after we’ve dropped off my things.”

He tailed her down the turning staircase until they found themselves in a narrower, darker, less threateningly grand hallway, and Clarke rapped on the first door on the left before letting herself in. Murphy slipped in behind her, and then froze in the open doorway.

The healer stared at him over tiny spectacles, surrounded by books and potions just like the ones he and Mbege had snatched from her saddle a mere two days ago in the western woods.

“Mom, this is my new friend…”

Murphy swallowed.

Clarke, to her credit, only raised a brow at that, slumping on a cot by the fireplace and resting her crutch against the wall with a gusty sigh of relief. “My new friend whose name he’d rather not say, who just helped me carry my things here. I got the herbs you needed from the market and the lotion bottles back from Zoran’s mother. Poor kid, I don’t think all the lotion in the world could fix that whole…” Clarke swirled a hand over her own face. “Situation.”

“Be nice, Clarke,” said the healer absently, still staring Murphy down. Murphy, who, despite the eight men he’d killed that morning, felt about the size of a mouse.

A moment of calculating silence passed as Murphy considered his escape route and the healer rooted around in his soul. “What’s going on here?” Clarke finally asked.

“I’m sorry,” Murphy said meekly, finding his voice. “We needed money.”

The healer only carried on staring, considering him. 

“Mom, is this one of the men who robbed you?” 

The healer’s silence was answer enough, and Clarke snatched her crutches from the wall and stood, the way she was looking at Murphy quite different now from the fascinated fondness she’d shown moments ago. “Should I call a guard?”

“I don’t wish to see a boy killed over a bag of potions.”

“It’s a little late for that, now,” Murphy snapped, tears suddenly springing to his eyes. The healer looked at the empty space to Murphy’s right, where Mbege should have stood.

“I have a proposition for you, boy,” she said, coming around the table and putting her little spectacles aside. “My daughter’s injury slows down our herb-gathering, our house-calls, and our deliveries. I don’t like risking her healing properly by sending her out of the castle on that crutch in the first place. You’re a healthy young man who owes me a debt. You’ll work under me until my daughter’s leg has healed and she can continue her apprenticeship. I’ll provide you room and board, and I won’t turn you in to the knights. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like you want me to be your errand boy,” he sniffed.

“Do you have something better to do?” she asked, and Murphy’s lip curled in a sour grin.

“Don’t suppose I do.”

The healer returned a smile of her own, though it was far kinder than Murphy’s, if not a little devious in its own right. If he was in the business of pointing fingers, he’d suspect she and her daughter both of being witchy women.

Gods. What on Earth had he gotten himself into this time?

☆☆☆

Murphy heard a voice in his head sometimes, calling a name that was not his own.

The first night he slept in Arkadia, on his new cot beside the doctor’s fire, he heard the voice as clear as if someone were speaking right in his ear. He could even describe it, now. A rough, feminine voice, echoing and rumbling like a rockslide.

_“Murchadh.”_

Murphy ignored it like he always did, writing it off as another strange side effect of his curse. Annoying but ultimately harmless, especially next to the part where everyone he loved died.

_“Hello, Murchadh?”_

He stared into the flames, wondering what Mbege would think of him, cozying up to the royal healer and her apprentice, brushing shoulders with princes, coming up on honest work and sleeping in a real bed. And all it had costed was Mbege’s life.

He’d still kill them all. He’d still burn it all down. He wouldn’t stop. But he had nowhere to go, and he just… needed time.

Murphy twitched his fingers under his quilt and made a little dragon in the fire, bright orange, shimmering with sparks and breathing plumes of smoke. One of the many tears puddled in his eyes slipped free, sweeping along the bridge of his nose. Murphy twitched his fingers, and let the dragon fly.

_“Oh. It really is you, Murchadh. You’re finally here.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so this is a thing i spent several months brainstorming and writing, and then the terrible thing happened on 9.9.20, and i had already written all this and didn't know what else to do besides publish it anyway and hope it makes people feel a little better.
> 
> anyway, this is the murphamy merlin au nobody asked for ?!?
> 
> let it be known that i have a very tenuous grasp on arthurian legend and whatever historical setting merlin was supposed to take place in and i don't let anyone proofread for me so don't nitpick just vibe.
> 
> anyway boogity boogity boogity let's go reading, boys
> 
> BEAUTIFUL ART OF THE BOYS BY THE EVER GENEROUS TALENTED AND LOVELY [OOGABOOGU](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogaboogu):
> 
> " />


	2. two

The bread and porridge Murphy had at the healer’s table was the best meal he’d ever eaten. The porridge was sweet, warm, and filling. The bread was soft and fresh, and crunched when he pulled it apart with his fingers, flaking but not crumbling. Murphy made sure to lick his finger and pick up all the crumbs, afterward.

It had gone quiet save for the morning birdsong outside of the castle, and when Murphy looked up, the witchy women were staring at him.

“S’good,” he mumbled, glancing between their expressions of open disgust with his head held low over his food like an animal starved. Abby seemed to soften at that and give up, sighing as she returned her attention to the agenda beneath her finger.

“I’ll be out in the lower town making house calls today. Clarke, you’ll stay in and brew me this list of tonics. You,” she said, looking at Murphy over her spectacles and trailing off. “I still don’t know your name, child.”

He swallowed. “Murphy,” he said, frowning at being called _child._ “I’m Murphy.”

Abby watched him a moment in that thoughtful, mysterious way of hers, and then glanced back down at her journal. 

“Murphy, you’ll make deliveries today. I have Harper the scullery maid’s cough drops, hemlock oil for Lord McCreary’s joints— that’s the visiting baron— the fletcher Tristan’s poultice for his arrow wound, and Lady Octavia’s sleeping draft.” The doctor looked at her list appraisingly. “That’s not many at all. I don’t imagine it’ll take you long. So, in that case, I’m in need of more lion’s mane mushrooms. You can take our gathering map.” 

Clarke pushed a folded-up parchment across the table, and Abby reached over to the bench behind her, planting a basket and a handful of colorful vials in front of him. Abby lowered her spectacles to look him over. “Will it be too much for you to handle?”

It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle it, he just wondered whether it was worth the trouble. The bed and the food were good, but _work?_ Then again, Murphy supposed there was no harm in being a man on the inside; keeping his enemies close. This silly deal with the healer only amounted to more time and opportunity to figure how he’d make dust of the world’s castles, and ashes of its kings.

Besides, he felt like he owed the woman.

“Looking forward to an honest day’s work, Doctor,” he said sweetly, scarfing down his last spoonful of porridge.

At the very least, it might be interesting. He was in the heart of the great Arkadia, after all.

☆☆☆

Murphy spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly, working up the nerve to ask servants for directions. It’s not that he was shy, he just really hated asking for things.

When he had delivered the cough drops, the hemlock oil, and the poultice, he at last found himself in front of the menacingly tall door to Lady Octavia’s chambers, and banged a fist inelegantly against the wood.

There was a thumping coming from inside, and then shouting, the meaning of which he couldn’t quite make out until someone opened the door just a crack, one eye and half of a nose and mouth peeking out.

“Can I help you?” the girl asked calmly, and past the gap left by the junction of her head and shoulders Murphy spotted a chair flying across the room, clashing against a bedpost and splintering to pieces.

“I… have the Lady Octavia’s sleeping draft,” he said, looking down at the dark purple liquid in the vial between his fingers as he listened to the woman behind the door rant and rave about this being ‘ _no way to live, no way at all!’_

“Great,” said the girl, snatching the vial from his hands and hiding it in the crimson bodice of her gown, at which point Murphy flicked his eyes to the ceiling and pretended to find it fascinating. It was rather interesting, actually, that they managed to make it that high. Surely there was no one so tall.

The girl began shutting the door, pausing only to mutter “Thank you,” as an afterthought, and to give Murphy a quick, curious once over. Then the woman inside shattered something glass, and the girl in the red bodice slammed the door in his face.

☆☆☆

Murphy wondered about Lady Octavia as he made his way out of the castle that afternoon, basket and map in hand. He wondered if it was her who opened the door and calmly took the draft from him, or her, who wailed and destroyed her own things. 

He wondered, if she were the latter, what the fuck a royal had to wail about.

He tried to set his mind on lion’s mane mushrooms, and watched his boots as he trudged over cobblestone paths toward the main gates, ducking his head and sacrificing the back of his neck to the beating of the summer sun. He tried until he came upon what looked like the knights’ training grounds, and another wailing royal made himself heard.

The prince was beating a knight of smaller stature into the ground, their swords scraping together along their edges as the knight desperately defended himself, his arm trembling as he struggled to keep the prince at bay.

“You can’t hold me back forever,” he shouted, instructing the small knight and the other knights looking on, though it sounded like taunting to Murphy. “You’ll have to regain the upper hand somehow.”

The knight surveyed his position, on one knee in the battered grass, both hands and arms occupied, one on the sword’s hilt and another dangerously gripping the blade, stabilizing it against the force of the prince’s weapon. He had a leg free, but if he kicked out at the prince he might have collapsed, taking a faceful of sword for his troubles.

“You look tired, Monroe,” the prince said, pressing forward, at which the knight winced, the distance between his body and their swords lessening by the minute. “If you can’t strike me, then can you escape? You have to _do_ something.” The knight only carried on shaking, exhausted and out of ideas but determined not to give up in front of his prince and peers. His prince, who wasn’t wrong: this fight was going nowhere.

Murphy sighed, watching the little knight sweat. He supposed he’d done stupider things than use magic on the crown prince of Arkadia.

The prince slipped, suddenly, on a slick patch of mud that appeared beneath the polished boot once giving him leverage, and fell into the knight, swords singing as their dulled blades slipped against one another and left the knight’s at the prince’s throat. The knight startled but, to his credit, quickly used the accident to his advantage. He steeled his face and jumped to his feet, kicked the prince onto his back, and held his sword exactly where it had ended up like that had been his plan all along.

“Do you surrender, Prince Bellamy?”

Prince Bellamy’s jaw pulsed under copper skin, his curls splayed out in perfectly dry grass. “I surrender, Sir Monroe.”

He took Monroe’s gloved hand and jerked himself to standing again, and stabbed his sword into the earth before he paced toward the outskirts of the field, dark eyes set on a pitcher of water.

The Lady Octavia was a mad woman, and the crown prince was a sore loser. Murphy could have laughed himself silly.

He was still grinning as the other knights crowded around the opponents in perfect halves, clapping the disgruntled prince and Sir Monroe on their backs and complimenting their footwork, their dodges, their parries. Murphy was pleased to have given the little knight a win, and elated in equal measure, if not more, to have pissed off his royal dickhead.

Murphy stopped grinning when the prince shouted at him for the first time.

“You, there!” he yelled, slamming down the pitcher on a bench and storming toward Murphy, who stumbled back a step. “Something funny?”

In that moment, Murphy chose to be honest. If only because, for once, it suited him. “Not every day you get to see the prince of Arkadia eat dirt.” The knights went abruptly silent, and the prince’s eye twitched.

“Are you _trying_ to anger me?”

Murphy looked him over. “Seems Sir Monroe took care of that just fine,” he said, and the little knight did all but squeak, shrinking in his chainmail. “You should really work on your balance. Throwing your weight around won’t work every time.”

The prince’s lips suddenly quirked up. He turned his head toward his knights, though his eyes never left Murphy, who shifted in discomfort despite himself. “You hear that, men? The country boy has some pointers for me.”

The knights laughed, though one of the men looked considering. “I wouldn’t be so quick to write him off, your highness. How many times have we found worthy opponents in unexpected places?”

Murphy’s eyes snapped to the knight, who only smiled in the way that a man who didn’t know about eight bodies in the western woods smiled. Then the knight grimaced as the prince gestured invitingly, mockingly, toward the field.

“Well, since you’re so eager to dole out advice, I think we’d all love to see a demonstration from a _worthy opponent_ such as yourself.” He looked Murphy over, and quirked his lips again in a way that Murphy found to be particularly mean-spirited. He matched the prince’s gaze stubbornly as he considered the offer, glaring back until the prince’s taunting, near-smile faltered and faded away, leaving him staring curiously at Murphy.

The prince wanted to make a fool out of him— Murphy’d let him try.

Prince Bellamy’s brows twitched up in surprise as Murphy stalked past him onto the training field, pushing through the knights and yanking the prince’s own sword out of the ground.

He held his chin high as the prince shed his chainmail and took up another practice sword as well as his shield, which had been lost during his fight with Sir Monroe. Murphy momentarily struggled with the weight of the shield that one of the knights passed to him, but closed his eyes and charmed it lighter. 

Prince Bellamy may have had a lifetime of training and experience under his belt, but Murphy had his magic, and he’d use it— fairness be damned. Nothing in this world was fair.

The prince grinned one last time, less cocky and a little more amused at the sight of the skinny country boy facing him, armed with a sword and a massive wooden shield. Murphy sincerely intended to knock that grin right off of his fucking face.

The prince twirled his sword and charged, first bashing Murphy off-balance with his shield and then following him like a predator as Murphy stumbled backwards.

Murphy righted himself before he fell and dipped out of the way of the first barrage of the prince’s jabs and slashes. It seemed he had picked up a few things in his years on the run from the law after all, and spared a moment to be impressed with himself before blocking an aggressive attack, the edge of the prince’s sword bouncing off of his with a frightful clash.

Though they were level at the shoulders, baring their teeth as they shoved against each other, they did not meet eyes. Murphy stared at the prince’s boots, caked with mud now, and tried to fathom some way to upend the prince without using the same trick twice. To his horror, he couldn’t. Prince Bellamy was relentless and vicious, and made thinking impossible. Murphy understood, suddenly, why the little knight had turned to stone beneath his sword.

The prince then made a great push to shift his weight, forcing Murphy to bend at the waist and knees, and he had to tilt his head skyward in order to see the prince’s face. A face presently marred by a snarl. 

“I don’t know who you are, or why you’re so keen on spitting at my feet,” the prince ground out, “but I am the crown prince of Arkadia. After I put you on the ground, you’ll learn to either mind yourself or find yourself in the stocks. You follow?”

“Yeah, I follow,” Murphy grunted, pushing back. “And after I put _you_ on the ground, you can compensate me for my time wasted entertaining your—“ he hissed as the prince shoved forward again, and Murphy rallied back, “—wounded, princely pride.”

The prince scoffed, but Murphy was keenly aware of the beads of sweat gathering along the prince’s hairline, above his lip. “It’s men like you, you know, who cause all the violence and strife,” he growled, while Murphy watched his scarred mouth. “Men who can’t accept the lot they were given in life, and hate everyone else because of it. ”

“Funny, I thought it was the men like you,” said Murphy, tightening his cramping fist around the hilt of his sword. “Men who think they rule the world.”

For a long moment, the prince seemed like he had nothing to say to that. He, of course, had to believe it was his birthright to rule the world. They grappled some more with their swords, probed for weaknesses in the other’s defense to no avail. When at last the prince stopped struggling, he grinned and said, “Lady Octavia would say it was just men.”

Despite himself, Murphy laughed. The second his eyes closed, Prince Bellamy hooked him around the ankle and sent him toppling. Murphy hit the ground and the air left his lungs all at once. He scrabbled, breathless and confused, for his fallen sword. When he found it was just out of his reach and the prince was coming near to pin him, he kicked out as if to startle him, and jerked the sword from the prince’s hands with a thought, flinging it to the ground. The prince stared at it, befuddled.

“Sweaty palms already?” Murphy gasped, meeting the prince’s newly furious glare before they both dove for the weapon, kicking and clawing for it in a decidedly un-noble fashion. In the end, Bellamy was stronger and Murphy, with his skull pounding and his chest heaving, was all out of clever little tricks.

The prince yanked the sword away and clambered onto Murphy, kneeling on his narrow chest. Though he laid his blade against Murphy’s throat, Murphy took some pleasure in the way the prince was heaving for breath, stray hairs plastered against his sweaty forehead and amber cheeks.

Murphy was a lot of things, a coward among them, but he was not meek. He would not go down quickly, nor quietly. Most of all, he would not apologize to a prince.

“Do you surrender, peasant?”

“My name,” he rasped, “is Murphy.”

Prince Bellamy’s expression bloomed with tickled curiosity again at Murphy’s refusal to accept his lot in life, though he did concede Murphy this one small token of respect. 

“Do you surrender, Murphy?”

“I do, _your highness,”_ he drawled, holding the prince’s bemused stare until he rose to his feet and stuck out a hand in offering. He had yet to take the sword from Murphy’s neck, leaving Murphy to choose between accepting his help or losing his own head, had it been a real duel with real swords. 

But their blades were dull and the battlefield was nothing of the sort, so Murphy shoved his sword away by the back of his hand and brushed himself off as he clambered up standing. 

Within seconds they were descended upon by knights, and the prince’s attention was soon drawn away from Murphy by chatter and egregious back slappage. Though most of the fuss, to his own confusion, was reserved for Murphy.

“That was insane!” cried an especially lanky knight. “So cool, that thing you did, with the—!“ The knight did a few jukes around empty air. “We barely ever dodge him at that range, he always gets us in the side! It’s like you totally threw him off, with your whole—!” He smoldered. Murphy stared at him, bewildered.

“You’d make a fine knight, country boy,” said another of the young men, with a cool, lazy kind of stare. “Sir Atom, pleasure to meet you.”

“Nice one,” said another, clapping Murphy on the back and whacking a huff of breath from him. “Sir Miller,” he introduced, eyeing Murphy warmly. “Gotta say, you just made all the squires and half of these knights look like punks.”

More knights introduced themselves: Sir Finn, Sir Sterling, Sir Monty— this one, who had given Murphy the benefit of the doubt as a worthy opponent, and who introduced the lanky, chatty knight as his friend Sir Jasper— and Sir Monroe, the little knight who was actually a little dame.

“Thanks,” she said, freeing her tight braid from where it had gotten briefly tangled in her mail. The braid looked frayed and mangled to death, but Sir Monroe didn’t seem to mind. Murphy quirked a brow in question. “It’s nice,” she explained, “when someone besides me reminds these jackasses to stay on their toes.”

Murphy was smiling by the end of it all, entirely without intention. He was sure he’d never been praised so much in all his life.

“Where are you from, stranger?” asked Sir Finn, arms crossed over his broad chest, though his smile was gentle.

Murphy thought to answer with the usual— just a cottage, on the easternmost edge of the Kingdom of Light. No, no village. Yes, he was all alone out there.

But he didn’t have to lie anymore. He had a bed now, and a roof to sleep under. And the farm boy was dead. The bandit was dead. This hollowed-out, _burning_ lookalike of Murphy, whoever he was, was all that was left. He wasn’t much, but he was something new.

“The castle,” he blurted, before he could think better of it. “I’m the new apprentice to Doctor Abby. At least for now.”

The prince, who had been busying himself with toweling off, looked over sharply. Murphy couldn’t decipher that and didn’t have time to, as Sir Jasper gasped with delight and flung an arm around Murphy’s shoulders.

“So you’ll be working at the first midsummer banquet tonight, since you’re basically a servant of the royal household! We can properly congratulate you for holding your own against the prince!” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Monty and I’ll smuggle you some of the good wine, none of that watered-down stuff.”

Murphy hadn’t known about a banquet, but supposed he’d like to get his hands on some good wine, and met Sir Jasper’s smile with one of his own. He imagined it must have looked rusty, and must have wobbled, and must not have sat quite right on his face, but Sir Jasper didn’t seem to mind a bit.

They were all much nicer than the eight men Murphy slaughtered in the forest. Guilt struck him hard and suddenly, as the knights’ smiling faces surrounded him and he wondered if they even knew their comrades were dead.

But Murphy’s friend was dead, too; his family and all the rest. He and the kingdoms, they would never be even. He remembered what he came here to do. The guilt left as quickly as it arrived.

He strode to the edge of the field, took up his basket and his gathering map, and faced the main gates once more. The sounds of training resumed soon after as the knights split off into sparring pairs; mail clashing with wooden shields and blunted swords. 

Murphy set his mind on lion’s mane mushrooms, but glanced one last time over his shoulder as the field grew quiet and far away.

Prince Bellamy, looking far more disheveled and disturbed now than he had when Murphy first arrived, was watching him go.

☆☆☆

Murphy stooped over a cluster of hairy white mushrooms.

_“Murchadh.”_

He plucked them by their stems, one by one, as the sun shone down through the canopy of still trees, no blooms of light dancing over the grass, but resting steady on a windless and silent afternoon.

_“Murchadh.”_

“Stop,” whispered Murphy.

For a moment it was quiet. He pulled another mushroom from the cluster, gathered at the base of a decaying birch tree.

_“Come and find me, Murchadh.”_

“Shut up!” he cried, flinging his basket across the wood. 

Then he walked after it, and picked all the mushrooms up again.

☆☆☆

A stuffed pig was staring at Murphy.

The banquet was the most gluttonous, hedonistic affair that he had ever had the horror of witnessing.

They’d made it through the pottage and the course of pike in galantine, but the third, fourth, fifth, and _sixth_ courses still beckoned. Murphy was told at some point there would be a fucking peacock, and he was currently looking the third course in the apple-corked face.

“I think you won,” murmured Clarke, speaking out of the corner of her mouth from his left, after she’d returned from limping over to fill the goblet of one of her assigned noblewomen. Murphy on the other hand was happy to spend his time as a servant slumped against the banquet hall’s wall, observing the festivities and quietly judging everyone in attendance. He’d been claimed by Sir Jasper and Sir Monty, who'd offered him wine and then hadn’t asked him for a thing else.

“What’s that?” he whispered back. Clarke nodded at the boar.

“Your staring contest,” she said. “You’re just mocking it now.”

Murphy couldn’t look away from the little olive eyes in the pig’s poor, wrinkled face. He liked meat just as much as the next guy, but this was just wrong.

“It’s actually really good,” whispered Clarke. “The stuffing is made of like…” She made a vague smushing gesture. “Liver?”

Murphy frowned and tore his eyes away just as the queen stood from her throne at the high table, smoothing down the intricately-patterned white and silver velvet of a billowing dress skirt. 

She was a tall and thin woman, her dark hair falling from an updo in elegant wisps around an angular face. She may have looked to anyone else merely a cold kind of beautiful like a winter tree, if a little serious, solemn.

To Murphy, who had heard the stories, she looked haunted. Grim, grieving, vengeful. A blizzard intending to reclaim.

Her son and her ward, the arrogant bully and the mad woman — who might have been intimidating anywhere else, to anyone else— were reduced to petulant children on either side of the terrifying Queen Aurora.

“Lovely people of the court. The story of Arkadia, its endless glory and triumph over magic and all other evils that might have wished to see this beautiful kingdom fall, is a story with which few can compare,” she began, her voice deceptively gentle, and Murphy’s blood boiled. “It is my pleasure to introduce the brilliant and renowned poet Tor, who I am certain will spin a tale for you all that competes.”

Murphy wanted to keep glaring at the royals, as the queen sat with her dainty hands in her lap like she hadn’t seen thousands of witches and warlocks’ heads split from their bodies in the very square below; as Prince Bellamy leaned on his knee and picked at his fish, childishly bored of the whole event, like children in the country could even dream up a meal or a show as grand as this; as Lady Octavia sat, shy and dark beneath the eyes in a shimmering emerald gown that must have been worth a small country— thinking of bloody, gory murder.

But the castle was soon to fall by his hand, and the bard was actually quite good, and Murphy always did love a story.

The bard Tor’s story went a bit like this:

First: there was a dashing young prince who slew evil witches, because of course there was.

Second: there was Murphy’s favorite character— the evilest witch of them all, a powerful sorceress whose mission it was to destroy the prince and let wild, violent magic run rampant in all the kingdoms of Earth. Murphy really sympathized.

Third: the evil sorceress slew the princess, the dashing young prince’s beloved sister, in order to steal her life force (not a thing) and become more powerful. This enraged the prince and sent him on a ferocious hunt for the sorceress, all alone without the King’s men.

Fourth—

Murphy felt a violent shiver go through him, from the tips of his fingers to every follicle of his hair. Something that felt to him both like a blinding flash of light upon silver, and a blue-white crack of lightning tearing through his veins.

“Are you alright?”

Clarke looked concerned, leaning into the corner of his eyesight. Murphy pursed his lips and nodded, though he was trembling, buzzing under the surface. He tried to focus and will the feeling away. Another strange side effect of his curse, that was all. Nothing worse than he was used to.

The burly bard had circled the tables below the salt for a fourth time and finally ambled toward the high table, gesturing sparingly and with a stoicism to his face that was likely unique in bards. Murphy might have even considered it poor showmanship if Tor hadn’t been so talented in weaving a tale; if his deep, rumbling voice hadn’t sounded so much like strange music.

Tor was nearing the end of his story, Murphy could tell. When he spoke again of the sorceress’ strikes against the prince, this time an unleashing of deadly snakes from her palm, Murphy wrenched his own head to the side with the sensation of that harsh light whipping through him again.

“Do you feel sick?” Clarke asked. “Do you need to leave?”

Murphy grit his teeth and straightened his head, focusing on Tor as the bard traced two big fingers along the edge of the high table. The queen was watching his hand, too. There was something irreverent about it— him touching that table.

The sorceress in the story struck at the prince again, casting him in a ring of fire that crept in slowly to engulf him. Murphy didn’t hear whether the prince was able to put it out, as his body was wrenched forward from the wall, his blood and his guts and his muscles and his mind searing blue and glaring white. He felt a single-minded desperation to find the source and his attention fell again to the bard, stepping back from the high table, his soft, watery eyes trained on the queen’s.

“—And when the evil sorceress last struck out at the brave prince, she cast a dagger into his heart, and there he fell.”

Some of the noblewomen in the hall gasped, looking amongst each other with wide eyes. The men frowned, but remained quiet. There were only three individuals in the room who could very well express their displeasure with the story. 

The queen was staring at the bard, unmoved but deeply suspicious, while the prince rested his chin on his fist, staring into his goblet as he swirled his wine around, neither of them much invested either way. 

Murphy moved in closer, ripping his arm away when Clarke made a desperate grab for him as he passed. Every part of him was alight, sharp tendrils of that maddening feeling cutting through his skin, reaching out toward the high table.

And what a maddening feeling it was; a surety that something terrible was bound to happen, something as terrible as the end of the world, if he didn’t put a stop to it.

“The prince died?” asked Lady Octavia, looking unhappy.

“The prince died,” answered Tor.

“Just like that?” asked Lady Octavia.

“Just like that,” said Tor, and raised his hands to the sky. He spoke in a language Murphy might have known in another life. There was a sudden great _crack_ and Murphy’s hands shot out before him, a burst of his own magic exploding in his chest of its own volition.

Everything had gone still.

A serving girl was pouring a never-ending stream of wine into a noblewoman’s goblet. A knight was reaching to catch a tumbling apple, hanging frozen in the air just above his open hand. The Lady Octavia’s expression was still twisted in a frown. The queen’s face was suddenly pale and drawn with fear. Tor’s hands were raised to the ceiling and his mouth still open on a spell.

Prince Bellamy was gazing into his watered-down wine, oblivious to the massive, iron candle beam above him breaking free of its chain.

Murphy didn’t know when or how he’d made it to the high table to stand before the prince, but there he was. Close enough to touch. Close enough to make a choice.

He could let the candle beam fall. Prince Bellamy’s brains would scatter across the trenchers. The country would mourn.

Or Murphy could save him.

Upon closer inspection, the prince had an unhappy tilt to his mouth. He must have been paying more attention the story than Murphy had thought, and didn’t like that the brave prince had died such an undignified death.

Murphy’s father had always loved telling stories. He spent many a night before the furnace reading poems to Murphy and his mother. He said stories had a profound effect on people; that, once heard, they settled much deeper beneath the skin than one might have noticed. 

What kind of story would it be— the handsome young prince, murdered over dinner before his family at the hands of a violent sorcerer.

Murphy hadn’t had time to come up with a plan to kill the royals and the knights and the noblemen without plunging the kingdom into chaos. He’d have to let them live until then, and Murphy had learned people like that needed very little time to do many horrible things.

“It could be anyone,” people would say of Tor, the beloved bard who’d weaseled his way into the castle and assassinated the prince. Everyone in the kingdom would accuse and be accused. They’d light pyres and pull the chopping block out into the square again. Hundreds more men, women, and children would die to quench the queen’s thirst for blood.

All because she missed her stupid, arrogant fucking son.

“Fuck,” Murphy muttered, raising a hand to draw in a storm from the east. He felt the clouds furl together, charcoal dark against a night sky, rumbling furiously with heat.

Then he stepped onto the dais and rounded the high table, and placed a hand on the prince’s shoulder. He swallowed, looking out over the frozen crowd in the banquet hall. He couldn’t imagine it, having so many eyes on him all the time. Being underestimated and ignored was half of everything Murphy had accomplished in his life, though his accomplishments were still few and far between.

He peered down at the prince, still slouched in his throne. Murphy righted his crooked circlet, just because it had been bothering him all night. Then he struck out a hand and pulled it in again fast, curled in a tight fist, willing time forward as he summoned a gust of stormy wind to barrel in and snuff out all the flames in the hall, lest anyone question how he’d gotten onto the dais so quickly.

All at once, the candle beam broke free from the ceiling, the queen dove for her son, the banquet hall filled with screams, and hidden by darkness as every light went out, Murphy pulled the prince from his throne with all his might.

They fell off of the dais and tumbled onto the stone floor, Prince Bellamy’s goblet toppling from the table and rolling after them, spreading its wine, just as the rightmost table collapsed beneath the candle beam. Trenchers and bowls and the fucking roasted peacock— which had apparently been cooked and then had all of its beautiful feathers wrapped back onto it, because nothing was sacred to these people— all gracelessly slid into the chasm where the table had split.

Prince Bellamy was lying halfway on top of Murphy, stuffing his mouth with black curls. He caught his breath and abruptly turned, freeing Murphy’s face of foreign hair and glaring wildly.

Murphy’s chest heaved with adrenaline and his mind raced with worry, scraping itself ragged, back and forth over whether he’d made the right choice, and he fumbled to think of something to say. 

“Hi.”

Prince Bellamy stared at him in astonishment— or disgust, Murphy couldn’t quite tell— before shoving himself off of him.

“What did you do?” he snapped, gaping at the fallen candle beam, hauntingly cast in violet moonlight filtering in from the clouds and the stained glass windows.

“How could this possibly be my fault?” Murphy spat, waving sharply at the destruction. Un-fucking-believable.

Guards and knights rushed to restrain Tor as the queen stumbled down from the dais, color returning rapidly to her chest and cheeks, reaching out for her son. She kneeled, dragging her white velvet gown with all the silver trimmings through a puddle of red wine to hold him.

“My boy,” she gasped, Prince Bellamy’s head cradled to her chest, and the rest of him rocking gently along with her, even old as he was. 

Murphy pulled his legs beneath him and sat watching as the prince lost his will to glare at him, to glare at Tor, to glare at the candle beam, and settled into his mother’s embrace. He was a fairly tall, broad-shouldered boy, but looked small in the circle of her arms.

The storm outside wound down to a gentle pattering rain on the windows of the banquet hall. When Murphy opened his eyes again, the queen was staring at him.

“You saved my son’s life,” she said quietly. “What is your name, child?”

Murphy never liked it when women who weren’t his mother called him ‘child.’ Never liked it when men who weren’t his father did the same. He thought he especially ought not to like it when the royal sorcerer-slaughterer said it.

But sitting there on his knees that night with a mother looking at him like a hero instead of a murderer… Murphy was a perfect stranger to hateful words. And hateful words were all he had for her.

“Murphy,” said the prince, his eyes still closed. “The doctor’s apprentice. His name is Murphy.”

“You deserve a reward, dear Murphy. A title of high honor and a position of great status,” the queen announced, smiling knowingly at the top of Prince Bellamy’s head before he jerked it back to stare at her. “How does ‘manservant to the crown prince' sound?”

Both boys cried out at once, _“No!”_

Queen Aurora only tutted. “I know you don’t want one, darling, but you’re of age now. You must have one and as fate would have it, a young, quick, trustworthy boy just like yourself has fallen right into our laps when you needed him most.”

Prince Bellamy looked like he might puke. Murphy could share that sentiment.

“As for you,” said the queen, turning her keen eye onto Murphy. “This is a great honor, I’m sure you know. A practical opportunity as well. You would have room and board as well as a fair wage for the foreseeable future.”  


“But… my apprenticeship,” Murphy argued weakly, sensing a losing battle.

“You can make time. I’m quite certain the doctor would be happy to share your talents,” she dismissed, waving a jeweled hand at Murphy. “I will not beg you to accept a gift. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Murphy, unsure of what other choice he really had, held his peace. The queen seemed placated, softening about the eyes as she released her unhappy son from her stranglehold and lifted her skirts to return to the dais. 

Prince Bellamy stood abruptly as if he hadn’t wanted to be held, grumbling and whacking imagined dust from his clothes, and then stared down at Murphy where he still knelt.

“I’m retiring for the evening. You’re relieved from your duties until morning,” he said, voice strained and displeased, eyes darting all around but never settling on Murphy. “The servant’s quarters adjacent to my chambers are available to you should you have need of them. Come sunrise, I’ll expect you to… oh, whatever.”

The prince turned and all but fled the hall, leaving one hell of a mess behind him.

“You’re _welcome!”_ Murphy yelled, though the great banquet hall doors had already rattled closed again. He scoffed and threw up his hands.

Manservant to the crown prince. The arrogant, rude, _ungrateful_ crown prince, who was, for reasons suddenly unclear to Murphy, very much alive.

Across the banquet hall, the stuffed pig was still staring at Murphy, now with a certain air about it that seemed to suggest it thought Murphy was quite stupid.

☆☆☆

Murphy, though he had tried to escape, had been recruited by the rest of the servants to assist in the painstaking work of cleaning up the ruined banquet hall. In that moment he resented Clarke and her crutch, the both of whom the servants had taken pity on and sent home to bed at a humane hour. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see dawn leaking in through the windows, now.

But it was, for better or worse, still dark as Murphy traversed the echoing stone halls of the castle alone, quite sure he was lost.

He picked a clove from his hair and flicked a clinging clump of jelly from his tunic, glowering at the little stain it left. The world was truly out to get him in every way that it could.

Manservant, manservant, manservant. The awful word kept running circles around his brain. He’d tried to see the good in it; he’d be even closer to the royals, and have every opportunity to kill at least one of them should he change his mind about saving him from Tor. 

But he couldn’t help feeling like he’d just been made a dog to sit at the prince’s feet.

Murphy kicked at a loose chunk of stone chipped from the wall as he walked, the rock echoing as it skittered across the floor and occasionally bounced from wall to wall. The sound reminded him how large the corridor was; drew his eyes to the looming windows filmed over by moonlight.

He approached the window and looked out over the sprawling kingdom, nestled for miles within great white walls. 

What the hell was he doing here? 

He wondered if it was hopeless; his plotting to avenge lost loves and remake the world. Every choice he made seemed to lead him that much closer and that much further from it all at once. He didn’t know what to do, or how to do it. He’d never tried to do much of anything at all. He was only a stupid kid. A stupid, _cursed_ kid.

Murphy turned and kicked at his stone as hard as he could, sending it careening down the hall. Then he frowned as it _plinked_ off of a door crossed by iron chains.

He came close and, after wondering briefly what might be behind a castle door bolted and chained, grabbed hold of the door’s heavy lock and melted it in his palm, the iron glowing orange and dripping silver from his fingers. 

Whatever was in there, he wanted to see it.

The door did not stick at the hinges or groan open, did not cough up clouds of dust and spiders as Murphy pulled it, creaking, from its socket. It’d been used, and recently.

He closed it gingerly behind him and found himself in a pitch black corridor. He felt around, blinked at a torch he found on the wall, and his vision adjusted as it burst into flame.

He was stood before a long staircase, feeding down into what looked like the belly of the earth.

“Is this stupid?” he wondered aloud.

_“Perhaps,”_ the voice answered, so loudly in his mind that it may just as well have come from in front of him and behind him and above him and below him. Murphy jolted in his skin.

It was that dark rumble he’d known since he was a child, and he felt like he was right upon it now.

“It’s you,” he said. The voice did not answer, and Murphy took the first step. Then he was running, practically falling down the endless staircase, turning where it wound into darkness and circled back again.

Just as he began to wonder if he’d been tripping over himself to reach nothing, nowhere, and would have to climb a thousand stairs to make it back to the world again, the stairs stopped coming.

He stepped out from the staircase and held his torch before him, casting a puny glow upon his surroundings. All he could see was smooth, gray stone beneath his feet. Water dripped from somewhere high. Everything else was silent and dark.

“Oh, so _now_ you’re quiet,” Murphy challenged, though his heart was slamming in his chest. He felt something here. Something… big.

There was a sound like the blustering of a great northern wind, and a faint but broad light fell into the cavern, draping itself gently over sharp, towering stalagmites. Chains rattled, unending. Then the wind blew over Murphy, sending him staggering back and pinching out his torch like no more than a candle wick.

When he found his footing again, he saw that the light was falling from white glowworm silk threading down from the cave’s jagged ceiling, waving softly like a woman’s hair, and casting silver stars on everything beneath it.

And what lied beneath it was a mountain of glittering scales, the massive body they lied across darker than night at the bottom of the sea, the creature’s wings as many leagues long as the banquet hall before it tucked them into its sides.

It set its emerald eyes on Murphy, each of them as big and round as moons.

“Hello, Murchadh. It took you long enough.”


	3. three

“You’re a dragon.”

“I thought that much was obvious,” said the dragon, bowing its head and lowering itself onto its haunches until it was eye level with Murphy. When it spoke he could see its teeth; see that a single one of its fangs was as tall as Murphy stood. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, young warlock.”

Murphy startled, feeling the ridiculous urge to check over his shoulder. “How did you know I have magic?”

“Dragons, witches, and warlocks— our souls are threaded together. I know many things about you, Murchadh.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Murphy snapped, though his mind was reeling over far more than particulars. “My name is Murphy.”

“Not to me, it isn’t,” answered the dragon, which was entirely unhelpful.

“You can’t just give me a new name.”

“It is not new at all. It, like you, has always been. And it always will be.”

Murphy found a rock, and sat on it, and put his head into his hands.

“I just… I just need a minute.”

“Take your time,” the dragon said agreeably. “Not like I’ve been waiting for eighteen winters.”

Murphy raised his eyes from his hands, peeking between his fingers at the black beast. It really was quite beautiful, in a terrifying way. He watched its massive tail swish, hanging over the edge of the big stalagmite the dragon was perched on, knocking pebbles free from its surroundings. The beast seemed to be smiling at him.

“I’m eighteen winters,” he said.  


“I know.” The dragon’s mouth twitched, showing the corner of its huge teeth.

Murphy shook his head in disbelief. “How are you here? I thought the queen had the last of the dragons wiped out when I was little.”

“You are still quite little,” the dragon said, cocking its head, and in that moment Murphy couldn’t argue with that. When the dragon next spoke, its rumbling voice was just the slightest bit softer. “I was kept. As a trophy.”

Murphy eyed the manacles around the dragon’s hind legs. “Cold iron. You can’t shift back into your human form to escape.”

The dragon only watched him with its big green eyes, but its silence was confirmation enough.

“You’ve been down here all this time?” he said, and felt a strange pang of sadness in his heart.

“Waiting for you,” said the dragon. “You’ll set me free.”

Murphy cocked a brow. “I will?” he asked, dubious.

“Yes. It’s how I’ve kept hope. I will bring you to know your true power, and you will learn how to destroy cold iron— you are the only creature who can— and you will release me from my prison. It is only a small part of the great prophecy. Every druid knows it. Every dragon knew it. Don’t you, young warlock?”

“The great prophecy? Look,” sighed Murphy. “This is all getting a bit too—“ he twirled a finger by his temple, “—cuckoo for me. I think you’ve been down here too long and it’s making you a little nuts, and I’m sorry about that. But I can’t help you. I don’t think I’m the warlock you’re looking for.”

“The prophecy told me you would say that,” said the dragon, smiling, which was utterly ridiculous. “You are Murchadh, the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the Earth. With the One True King, you will unite the thirteen kingdoms and bring magic back to the land.”

“Okay,” laughed Murphy, and fetched his torch. “Whatever you say, O ancient one.”

_“It is true!”_ the dragon insisted, clambering to its jangling, clawed feet, rattling the entire cavern and scaring the shit out of Murphy, who cowered again beneath the beast’s full height. “What must I say to convince you?”

Murphy collected himself, refusing to shiver before the dragon. He pointed his blown-out torch at the dragon and swirled it around, expectant. “Tell me something the _prophecy_ says about me that nobody else would know but you and I. Something you couldn’t have just made up.”

The dragon bowed its head, calm and solemn again. “When your mother and father were killed, you tore a veil between worlds. Something no man before has done.

“You have taken all the rest of your dead to Gaia, the Lady of the Lake, to ensure their souls would make it safely to the spirit world. Do you think the Lady of the Lake does favors for just anyone?”

Murphy fell to his knees, staring up at the dragon.

“You are so terribly angry, young warlock. You want to watch the world burn. As do I.”

The dragon lowered its head to the stone cliff, placing its huge snout right before Murphy. A great, warm gust of air blew over him as it breathed, tousling his air and shutting his teary eyes.

“But there is a better way. There can be magic. There can be peace.”

Murphy didn’t want to kill. The anger came and went, but he didn’t want to kill. He didn’t want to destroy families, didn’t really want to raze cities to the ground. He didn’t want to be the villain. He wanted magic. He wanted peace.

He opened his eyes, and searched twin rings of emerald. The dragon’s eyes were full of pain, but at the same time, hopeful. Beneath his breath, Murphy swore.

“What do I have to do?”

The dragon seemed, again, to soften and smile. Its smile was almost goofy, another pleased curl of the lip exposing columnar fangs. Murphy huffed a laugh.

“It’s easy,” the dragon said. “Prince Bellamy.”

“I have to do Prince Bellamy?”

The dragon frowned. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Quite sure.”

Murphy craned his neck as the dragon drew up to its full height again, turning its head this way and that as it stared curiously down at him. “You really are only a boy,” it said, and Murphy was about to bristle when it continued, “What a great destiny for such a small thing.”

Murphy felt humbled again beneath the looming dragon, beneath the weight of this strange prophecy, and wanted to shrink until he was very small indeed.

“Don’t be afraid,” it said, while Murphy’s heart pounded in his chest. “The prophecy only tells of things you still would have done without knowing. It will not come easily to you, but it will come naturally. You and the prince are two sides of the same coin. Protect the prince from harm, as you have already done. Lead him into the world of magic and follow him to the throne. He will be a great king, the One True King, and you will stand at his side.”

“I don’t want to stand at his side!” Murphy barked, frustrated and terrified at once. “He’s a dick! And I’m not suddenly rubbing elbows with royals because the crazy old dragon under the castle told me to!”

“I am actually quite young still,” the beast corrected him. “For a dragon, that is.”

“This is insane,” Murphy gasped, pacing. “I can’t do this. Why me? I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“This is your destiny.”

“It’s a _curse!”_

“No one’s asking you to save the world in a day, Murchadh,” the dragon said, and seemed to purr as it lowered its head again, coming an arm’s length away from Murphy. The sound shook his chest, but was strangely soothing. “Patience is a virtue you have yet to learn.”

“Yeah, kind of feeling fresh out of virtues at the moment,” he snarled, though his breath was returning tentatively to his lungs, his frantic heart slowing.

“You are not alone,” the dragon rumbled, nudging Murphy’s arm ever so gently. “I will help you, because you will help me. Until that day, I will always be here.”

Murphy took a deep breath, and lay his trembling hand on the dragon’s snout. Its pitch scales glittered all around his palm, simultaneously smooth and sharp to the touch like a million flint daggers. 

“Great,” he muttered, crossing his arms over the dragon’s snout and resting his chin atop them. “My only friend is a giant dragon.”

The dragon’s sparkling eyes became curious. “A friend?”

“The bar is very low,” Murphy rationalized, but the dragon still seemed quite shyly happy over it.

The dragon that had spoken to Murphy all his life, telling stories that put him to sleep as a child and as he grew older, desperately begging for him to come and find it, frightening Murphy and keeping him awake. The dragon who was presently watching him with its mammoth eyes and rumbling beneath him like he was the greatest gift in the world. He wondered what else this day could possibly throw at him.

“So, you got a name, dragon?” he sighed, for once accepting his lot in life.

“Yes.” The dragon seemed to grin again, a fang peeking over its lip. “I was called Lexa.”

☆☆☆

When Murphy reached the doctor’s chambers at last, he collapsed face first onto his pallet before the fire.

The staircase to the belly of the earth was a lot less fun going up than it was down.

Despite the million thoughts running through his mind, Murphy felt himself drifting away the moment he hit the quilts, boots still on and all. That is, until Clarke.

_“Psst. Murphy.”_

Murphy ignored her where she lay on her cot in the corner, keeping his eyes resolutely shut.

_“Murphy, I know you’re still awake. Where have you been?”_

One voice out of his head while he was trying to sleep, and another came right in. Maybe Clarke and Lexa were the ones who were two sides of the same coin. 

_“In the morning,”_ Murphy begged.

Clarke’s need to know everything was insatiable. _“I heard the queen made you a servant of the royal household. Were you with the prince just now?”_

_“God, no. I was just trying out the servant’s quarters,”_ Murphy lied. _“The bed sucks.”_

_“So you come crawling back,”_ Clarke teased. _“Tell me, are you looking forward to giving him baths?”_

_“The better to drown him in.”_

Clarke giggled at that, but stifled the noise with her hand so as not to wake up her mother in the room over. Murphy smiled sleepily.

_“I’ll teach you everything you need to know about being a serving boy,”_ Clarke promised, yawning. _“You’ll love it.”_

_“Will I, now?”_

_“No. But it’s good to stay positive, right?”_

_“Right,”_ Murphy muttered, whipping a blanket over him and rolling himself into it. _“How exactly would you know everything about being a serving boy in the royal household, anyway? You only serve at banquets and run errands for the doctor.”_

_“I’m friends with Raven, maidservant to the queen’s ward. You’ve probably seen her around by now. All she talks about is weapons and work. And by work I mean Lady Octavia.”_

_“I can imagine.”_

_“Hey!”_ Clarke whisper-shouted _. “She’s actually really nice. She just… she struggles, is all. Terrible nightmares. She’s very anxious. I can’t imagine almost seeing her brother killed tonight will help.”_

Murphy rolled over and gaped, and Clarke’s eyes widened through her blonde mop of a bedhead. _“Well, half-brother,”_ she added, like it made a difference, and then frantically waved her hands. _“Please don’t tell anyone I told you that. No one’s supposed to know. It’s not really appropriate for the queen to have affairs as a widow to the king, so they just call the Lady Octavia a noblewoman from a foreign kingdom that Queen Aurora has taken in on account of the King’s dying wishes or something. They’d treat Lady Octavia like a bastard child, otherwise.”_

Murphy stared. _“Remind me to never tell you any secrets.”_

Clarke flapped a hand. _“Oh, it’s really not a secret in the castle. I mean, look at her beside Prince Bellamy. They barely look alike but the resemblance is there, and she looks just like the queen. It’s just a thing, you know? An unhappy little thing you don’t speak on.”_

Murphy hummed, thinking it hardly sounded _little,_ and though the gossip was good, he could hardly hold his eyes open anymore. Clarke only spoke again just as he was falling asleep.

_“I should warn you they’re calling you a hero out there, Murphy. Don’t forget the little people.”_

_“I’m never popular for long,”_ Murphy replied, clinging to consciousness _. “They’ll see the real me eventually. Then they’ll want my head.”_ He had learned long ago that the best kept secrets sounded like jokes.

_“Yeah, right. And you’ll hate beating them off with a stick until then.”_

_“I’ll dread it.”_

Clarke scoffed. _“Goodnight Murphy.”_

Murphy smiled, feeling like maybe he had a friend besides the giant dragon after all. _“Night, Clarke.”_

☆☆☆

It was hard not to believe his destiny was a curse when Murphy realized his first act toward this elusive peace was condemning another sorcerer to death.

The sun was just rising when they built a pyre in the courtyard and dragged the bard out to it in shackles. Murphy’s eyes were drooping where he stood beside Clarke, and dew was sparkling over everything and fog was collecting under the sticks, but he did not yawn, did not rub his eyes, didn’t take them off of the bard for even a moment. He didn’t deserve to.

From the castle balcony, Queen Aurora announced that the bard Tor had been sentenced to death for the crimes of sorcery and attempted murder. She stressed that the attempt had been made on the life of her son, Arkadia’s beloved prince. It was clear there had been no trial. It was clear not even one of his crimes alone would have warranted a trial. The only thing worse than sorcery was trying to kill the prince, and the only thing worse than trying to kill the prince was sorcery.

When Tor was offered a chance to say his last words, he held his head high. He wasn’t facing the royals on their balcony, but stared at the sky like he was hoping his expression would reflect in the mist.

“Two years ago, my daughter decided to live with the druids. I feared danger would find her. She was only thirteen, and the world was so evil. She hadn’t received a lick of magic from me, and her mother had none. She couldn’t defend herself. But we had brought her to them because she was steadily going blind, in hopes they could heal her eyes. And they did, with no pain, at no cost. Reese fell in love with their way of life. She wanted to care for magical creatures, to learn to sing and dance, to grow gardens, to tell stories, to play instruments, to heal others. She said she’d stay close to the druids. So I let her stay. Reese was there when Prince Bellamy led a raid on that camp and had everyone in it slaughtered.”

The crowd did not gasp or exclaim. The morning was deathly quiet.

“She wrote to me, Reese. She told me the druids were a kind and gentle people. They used magic for little more than chores and foraging and harmless tricks that made the children smile. They forbade even bringing harm to an animal. They offered aid to the ill. They delivered food they gathered and clothes they sewed themselves to villages in need. They took in anyone who needed a home. They had an infirmary full of the sick and injured. They had a school full of young children. They had mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. And your prince killed every last one of them.”

“Is that all?” said the queen.

“That is all,” said Tor.

Murphy never could stand the smell of burning flesh. When he finished vomiting and wiped his mouth miserably, he looked up, and found Prince Bellamy was gone from the balcony.

“Go on,” whispered Clarke, rubbing his back. “Maybe he needs something.”  


Though it was a little too late, Murphy was still pathetically grateful.

☆☆☆

Murphy was murderous.

He thundered up the stairs to the top of the castle, not minding his aching legs.

Fuck the plan. Fuck the prophecy. And _fuck_ Prince Bellamy.

He could not protect a man who hunted innocents. He could not stand beside a man who murdered indiscriminately; who wiped out villages to fulfill political goals. He could not share his world with a man who wanted to erase it. He could not, _would_ not, share a destiny with a man like that.

Some people didn’t deserve second chances. Some people just had to die. Murphy did not think himself a god, and Murphy did not like to kill, but he was willing to do what needed to be done.

On the uppermost level of the castle, Murphy rigidly approached the lone guards on the first door of the first hall. They may as well have had a big glowing arrow pointing to the door that said, ‘PRINCE INSIDE.’

“I’m the manservant,” he spat upon arrival. The guards nodded their permission, and Murphy rolled his eyes and shoved the double doors in, slamming them again behind him.

He was stopped in his tracks by the state of the prince’s chambers.

It was a rather barren and boring room. There was a long, polished table with too many chairs. A four-poster canopy bed piled with plain navy and eggshell quilts. Two upholstered chairs tilted toward a grand but not lavish fireplace. An unembellished armoire. The only items worth making note of were an ornate changing screen embroidered with gold thread that didn’t quite match anything else in the room, and a towering bookcase stuffed with books of every size and color and wear, some so greatly used that their spines were soft and falling off. The last were the parchments scattered about the floor, an overturned ink well spreading its black pool over the stone, and the simple desk by the window lying on its side.

The last thing that stood out to Murphy was the prince, sitting in the sill of a tall, arched window, gazing out at the rolling fields beyond the kingdom’s white walls.

“I’m not in need of anything,” he said brusquely.

“Didn’t ask,” Murphy replied, scouring the room again. There was a platter of breakfast foods growing cold on the long table; ham becoming slimy, strawberries getting soft, sliced bread going stale, and a dish of melting butter. Murphy took the knife from beside it as he passed, approaching slowly and quietly.

He would come up behind the prince. He would slit his throat and tip him out of the window for good measure. 

Murphy switched the knife into his other hand and wiped his sweating palm on his breeches. He wondered what Lexa would think of him, spoiling her ridiculous dream within hours, and then quickly stopped wondering. It had to be done. He had to be the pragmatist between them, and cut the violence off at the root.

He was close, when the prince spoke up.

“I don’t do raids anymore, you know. I always hated them.”

Murphy stilled.

“They were my mother’s idea. I thought we should just keep the inner city free of magic, eliminate any threats as they appeared instead of going looking for them,” he confessed, looking far off in his mind. “But I wanted to make her proud. I knew she’d feel safer, if…”

“If everyone with magic was dead.”

Prince Bellamy lowered his eyes to his hands. “Yes.”

Murphy cleared his throat, switching the blade between his clammy hands again. He wasn’t sure what compelled him to ask, “And you agree?”

“That the world would be better off without magic?” The prince opened and closed his mouth a few times, hesitating, before casting his solemn gaze out onto the fields once more and steeling his expression. “I suppose it would.”

“You suppose?” Murphy repeated, incredulous.  


“That’s what I’m fighting for, isn’t it?”

Murphy was about to bark out a scathing reply, something about how any man who would kill thousands ought to be sure of his reasons for doing so, when the prince suddenly thunked his head against the window and pinched the bridge of his nose, digging his fingers into his eyes as if to stave off tears.

“It’s days like today,” he said then, sucking in a hurried breath after, his voice cottony and thick. “Days that make me wonder if the ends justify the means.”

Murphy blinked in surprise, his grip on the knife handle loosening. He was not unfamiliar with any of this. Prince Bellamy, foolishly, felt like his only choice in making a better world was to destroy magic. Murphy felt that that world would be borne from the destruction of all those who would oppose magic. What was it Lexa and her idiotic prophecy had said of them? Two sides of the same coin.

Murphy sighed, casting one last look at the prince’s profile from where he stood. His chestnut eyes were sober and distant as he stared out at the land, his face still flushed with emotion. His room had been trashed in a fit of grief. The prince did not like to kill, but was willing to do what he believed needed to be done. 

He could be changed. He could learn that magic could be beautiful and good, in the right hands. Not Murphy’s hands, but someone’s. He could stop the executions and the raids and the hunting. Murphy could convince him to fix it all.

If the prophecy thought a pair of killers could bring peace to the world, then fuck it. Murphy could pragmatically investigate the possibility. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

He retreated to the table and let the knife clatter back onto its polished surface, startling the prince from his dark daydreams.

“You should ask permission to come in,” the prince admonished quietly, before glancing at Murphy out of the corner of his eye and looking suddenly unsure. “…In the future.”

Murphy perched himself on the edge of the table and helped himself to the rest of the prince’s breakfast, who he figured was too guilty and righteous to do anything about it at the moment. Prince Bellamy only glowered as Murphy swung his feet and stuffed a too-large chunk of bread into his mouth by poking it inside corner by corner until it disappeared.

“Are we really doing this?” the prince snapped, swinging his legs off of the windowsill and marching over to kneel and gather his scattered parchments. “I predict you’ll be useless at best and actively treasonous at your worst.”

“What,” Murphy said, crumbs flying from his mouth. “‘Da o’ manser’ant t’in’?”

The prince looked up from where he knelt, unamused and making no effort to hide his disgust. “Yes, the whole manservant thing.”

Murphy swallowed. “Don’t think we were offered much of a choice in the matter.”

“No, we weren’t,” the prince reluctantly agreed, giving Murphy another once-over with his lip curled before returning to his very intense parchment gathering. “I won’t need or want you around often, I value my privacy and my space.”

Murphy rolled his eyes and kept his comment to himself by shoving another chunk of bread into his mouth. He was hardly planning on hanging off the prince’s arm.

“But my mother will expect to see you around; at dinner and on the training field, things of the public sort.”

“If you want to spar me again you could just say so,” Murphy said, licking his fingers. He paused and glanced over in surprise as the prince let out a laugh. Though it was scornful, it was still an oddly pleasant sound, rough and warm. After a moment’s consideration, Murphy decided he found it incongruous with the prince’s character and thereby false and also annoying.

“Not likely,” replied the prince, really bringing home the disdain by wrinkling his nose. “I’d ask you kept your distance and let me work. You’ll be nothing more than a decoration to please my mother and to spare me a manservant who would actually want to do his job.” The prince shook his head. “And shut up, will you? I don’t need anyone else hearing the way you speak to me. They’d either think I was weak or want to have you executed.”

“Which are clearly of equal concern,” Murphy quipped, leaning back on his elbows and sifting through what was left of the platter. “So in short, I’m just supposed to stand around and look pretty?”

Prince Bellamy gathered the last of his parchments and turned an exasperated look onto Murphy, then flicked his eyes away as Murphy popped a strawberry into his mouth. “Something like that.”

Murphy swallowed and shrugged, watching him tap his papers into a neat pile and rise from the floor. “Whatever the hell you want, sire.”

The prince went a hilarious shade of maroon at the bastardization of the title, though nothing corrupting had been done to it save for it falling off of Murphy’s irreverent tongue. He turned his back to Murphy and placed his parchments on the end of his bed, then moved to right his fallen desk. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why?” asked Murphy, perusing the prince’s breakfast platter for his next helping. “Am I special?”

The prince paused with his hands on the edge of his desk, and then gave a minute, incredulous shake of his head. “You are something else altogether, Murphy.”

Murphy had never blushed at the sound of his own name before.

After a moment of quietly watching the prince set his desk to rights, Murphy sighed, eyeing the ink spill with distaste. “Got anything for me to do?” he asked, and didn’t have to try very hard not to sound eager, though he imagined the prince didn’t much care what he did or didn’t want. The prince glanced from the spill to Murphy’s tired eyes, and whatever he saw there made him raise a brow.

“My only task for you today is to get some rest. You look like shit,” the prince appraised, which was not very princely of him, before kneeling and picking his quill out of the ink, pointlessly shaking off the blackened feather.

Murphy hopped off of the table and scratched absently at his arm for a moment, bewildered, before turning and making his way toward the doors. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“And… thank you,” Prince Bellamy murmured. “For saving my life.”

Murphy swallowed, avoiding eye contact with the back of the prince’s curly head. “Yeah, well.” He opened the doors a crack and slipped halfway through before bidding his goodbye. “Don’t get used to it.”

The prince was still a dick.

☆☆☆

On the highest floor of the castle of Arkadia, on the day of the bard Tor’s execution, with nothing more in mind than returning to the doctor’s chambers and sleeping the day away— Murphy saw something.

He’d heard weeping and whispering. Softly, and muffled by a small door to a little antechamber. Then he heard their voices.

It seemed he and the prince weren’t the only royal and servant who’d fled from the tower of fire.

“Everyone’s out in the courtyard,” said the first familiar voice. “Whatever it is, you can tell me now, and no one but us will know.”

Murphy clenched his jaw, feeling guilty somewhat, but still inched closer to the door.

“I don’t think anyone should know,” said the other voice. “I think I’d be putting both of us in danger by telling you, but…” The voice stopped to gasp, choking on a sob. “I can’t do this alone anymore.”

“Obviously. So please, trust me with this. When have I ever let you down?”

“Never.”

A small table with gilded edges sat beside the door, decorated by a skinny vase of daisies. Murphy had noticed the flowers beside several small doors now, and assumed they marked servant’s passageways. Above it was a vent, ornately-carved and conducive to a bit of airflow without being an ugly hole in the wall. Carefully, Murphy lowered the vase to the floor and climbed onto the table, wondering what on Earth had possessed him.

The table wobbled briefly beneath Murphy’s weight— he was a wiry thing, but a far cry from a vase of flowers— and he held his breath, clutching the grooves of the stones in the wall until it stilled. Then he raised up on his knees and peered through the vent.

The Lady Octavia was slumped on the stone in front of her maidservant. Raven, the girl in the red bodice who had taken the Lady’s sleeping draft from Murphy. The maidservant was not kneeling with the Lady but looked as if she’d like to be, slumped low against the wall across from her charge.

“Promise me, Raven,” said Lady Octavia, her voice trembling something fierce. “Promise me you’ll always be my friend.”

“I will always be your friend,” Raven replied, and had such a sure and stoney way about her when she spoke that Murphy, suspicious until the day he died, believed her too. “You could be hiding a bear in your chambers or have an extra face on your ass and I would still always be your friend.”

The Lady Octavia laughed wetly, and then sobered quickly, whispering, “It’s worse than that.” She stared at her upturned palms. “I think my family would have me killed for it.”

“For having an extra face on your ass? Surely not,” Raven said, crossing her arms.

The Lady Octavia shook her head, slick, dark hair falling into her terrified eyes. She was not laughing now, and Raven sobered.

“I would never hurt anyone, Raven. I would never have tried to bring this on myself. I didn’t even know that I… until recently. I was just born this way.”

Raven jutted out her chin. “Show me, Octavia.”

She took a deep breath, looking up at her friend as if it might be for the last time.

Then the Lady Octavia cupped her pale hands together, and from them, a little blue butterfly was born.


	4. four

Murphy had been in Arkadia for seventeen days when the midsummer festival arrived, and things had gotten kind of out of hand. Well, _more_ out of hand.

He’d found himself with… friends.

Due to the nature of his curse, Murphy usually made it a point to keep people at a distance— though not to say anyone was breaking the door down to get chummy with him.

But at present, he’d been saddled with the serving girls’ shopping bags, walking arm-in-arm with Clarke through the festival’s booming market as the Lady Octavia searched for the perfect gift.

For _him._

He had no idea how it had happened. When he’d seen Lady Octavia use magic, he scrambled off of his wobbling table and fled from the antechamber, figuring he’d seen all he needed to see. The sorcerer-slaughterer queen’s ward— no, her _daughter_ — was a witch. What could he do with that knowledge besides stuff it deep down inside, and never speak of it to anyone?

It could not lead to a bonding moment between him and Lady Octavia. He had no confidence that the girl would not take his secret to the queen and see him killed to win her mother’s favor. Nor could he help her; even just his support could be considered treason. He was not a friend to her, not like Raven. He would be so very easy to turn over.

But that was then, before Clarke had dragged him along to Raven’s forge.

It turned out that the reason the Lady Octavia and her maidservant were so rarely seen in the castle was because they were squirreled away in Raven’s blacksmith shop, a location that Clarke frequented too.

He’d been sure they’d resent him and Clarke both for spoiling that sacred place by bringing him there. But they didn’t. The Lady Octavia had been pleasant with Murphy right away, likely on account that he was on his best behavior. Raven just seemed to find him funny and easy to pick on.

Within a few visits, it became abundantly clear to Murphy why the girls spent so much time in the haven of Raven’s forge.

Raven worked like a man— in breeches and a dirty apron, sweating over a fire, beating the shit out of blazing hot billets of steel. The other girls had laughed when he’d gawped at Raven growing hot and rolling up her sleeves, exposing arms muscular enough to pick Murphy up and wave him around like he was a piece of cloth.

The Lady Octavia had shocked him much the same, demonstrating that she was more than a little handy with the many beautiful swords she had commissioned from Raven. She ran her drills inside the privacy of the forge, her silken dress skirts flying all around as she lunged and danced and swiped and stabbed, causing no shortness of misery for a few sacks of straw.

Between Raven’s strength and cleverness, Lady Octavia’s status and power, and Clarke’s mischief and general excellence— Murphy and his silly cloud magic felt a little outnumbered. Surely it was one of them who was meant to change the world, and he could just slip out the back door.

But they’d made him a part of their inner circle. Now Murphy wondered if he could still hold them at arm’s length without raising suspicion. 

At least Prince Bellamy made it easy, he thought, glancing over his shoulder far across the sunny courtyard where the prince was standing rigidly on the balcony, speaking to some dreadfully boring nobleman or the other.

He had been making good on his demand that Murphy stay out of his way, asking little to nothing of him and rarely exchanging more words than strictly necessary. Good. Murphy didn’t want anything to do with him either.

“Murphy, do you have a favorite color?” asked Lady Octavia suddenly, daintily crossing calloused hands behind her back and peering at a stall whose front table was scattered with jeweled badges and brooches.

Murphy looked to Clarke for help, but she was preoccupied with scratching the flea-infested head of that same damned scraggly street dog. 

“Uh, no,” he said warily, watching the Lady’s blunt, chewed nails trace every gem, and the merchant never say a word. Murphy imagined anyone else would have found themselves beaten off with a broomstick for even looking at the jewels wrong.

“Everyone has a favorite color,” she declared, nodding at the merchant and carrying onto the next stall. “Clarke’s is pink, like the medicinal bee balm flower. Raven’s is red, like steel in a forge. Bellamy’s is blue, like the family crest. And mine is green, like the forest.” The Lady tossed a smile behind her. “Think of something that makes you happy, Murphy, and then tell me what color it is. Any color.”

Happy. Think of something happy.

Murphy frowned at his hands. When had he been happy?

He tried the obvious and thought of his father, his cinnamon hair and his leather-back books. Then he thought of his mother and her ridiculous bow, standing outside in the cold firing clumsy arrows at tree trunks. He thought of the time she actually shot a pheasant, and how they’d all cheered and laughed until they cried, hugging each other and the poor bird too. He thought of a round little oak table and three clay bowls, and all the times they cooked and ate together. He thought of his straw pallet and the wooden toys his mother whittled for him. He thought of the bandit girl he’d traveled with after… after he left home, her pushcart and the huge leather glove she wore on just the one hand. He thought of Mbege, and the pile of autumn leaves Murphy had once shoved him into before diving on top of him, knocking the breath from both of them. He thought of home, and of warmth, and of laughter.

His lips twitched into a wistful smile. “Brown, I think.”

The girls stopped walking, turning incredulous looks onto Murphy.

“Brown,” Raven repeated.

Murphy tore from his reverie. “She said any color!”

Lady Octavia’s brows were furrowed, before they smoothed out again and she smiled softly, amused. “I did say any color.”

“You’re a strange man, Murphy,” said Raven, limping on without them, muttering, _“Brown.”_

Clarke seemed like she’d missed the conversation altogether, returning from a nearby stall and adding a few new glass vials for the apothecary into the shopping bag she’d forced onto his shoulder. At least he thought she had, up until she smiled up at him and ruffled his hair, making him jerk away and splutter. Clarke paid him no mind, looking satisfied and linking their arms together again.

“Something practical, I think,” said Lady Octavia, perking up as they left the part of the market glittering with silky, shiny luxury items and entered rows of stalls boasting hardier tools and gear, supplies for the working man.

“Lady Octavia,” Murphy started, shaking his head, “I’m sorry for… speaking out of turn, but—“

“I don’t even know what that means,” interrupted the Lady.

“Me either,” admitted Murphy. “But I gotta say, I don’t understand what this is for.”

The Lady Octavia turned to walk backwards and face him, and how she didn’t trip over her skirts and go tumbling was a testament to the sure-footedness of a fighter. “My role in the castle is to sit around, be quiet, and look the part. I can’t have any hobbies besides embroidering, picnicking, and shopping. Luckily, I like shopping, and I have a ridiculous amount of money and nothing to spend it on besides myself and my friends. Would you deprive me of this small joy, Murphy? Of course you wouldn’t, you’re much too sweet for that.”

Murphy stared as the Lady Octavia made a beeline to a tanner’s booth, laid eyes on an expertly crafted leather belt complete with a pouch and a small scabbard, slammed down a sack of coins without counting them and said, “We’ll take it! Know anyone who’ll sell us a decent dagger for that scabbard?”

“I told you she was nice,” Clarke whispered, and all Murphy could do when Lady Octavia skipped over to dress him up herself was hold out his arms, and try to return her brilliant smile. For all she had suffered, she did have a brilliant smile.

So Murphy had no idea how it had happened. But he did rather like the leather belt.

☆☆☆

A pipe and a tabor, a vielle, a lute, instruments Murphy had never even seen let alone heard played by masterful bards all sounded out from the bodies of musicians perched on the edges of the towering fountain in the courtyard. Dancers in colorful dresses clearly sewn with propensity for billowing in mind spun about the square with castanets clicking. Clearly the greatest talents came from far and wide to entertain at Arkadia’s festivals, and Murphy was too awed to protest as the girls cheered in delight and dragged him right into the middle of it all.

Raven and Lady Octavia paired off together, fluffing their skirts and sharing pins to pull their hair away from their faces. Clarke shot an unimpressed look at Murphy’s short hair and breeches, like he was ruining some sort of ritual by not requiring any fluffing or pinning, and then took several steps away and set her side to him.

“I’ll take a guess that you don’t know how to properly dance,” she said, which Murphy tried not to take offense to. “Face the other way and do what I do. Be a reflection of me.” Murphy opened his mouth to say he wouldn’t be participating, when the music suddenly flared and Clarke hobbled toward him, reaching out with the hand unoccupied by maintaining her crutch and grasping his, locking his elbow at a straight, upward angle.

“I’m going to let go of your hand, but keep our palms together.”

“But—“

She pressed their palms together and stepped away, and Murphy found himself obeying, taking a delayed step back himself. Then she came in close again, pressing against his side, and then away, and then in again, turning them in a small circle. Then she brought their arms over their heads and pressed their backs together, and tilted her hips forward in the best lunge she could manage, bending them into an arc. 

Murphy was tilted toward the sky, and grinned at the sun setting slow and pink over a thousand fluttering banners, to the tune of a song growing ever faster and the laughter of dancers as they tried to keep up.

“This is a horrible dance,” he said, as they brought their spines together again and twirled, coming palm to palm once more.

Clarke smiled at the look on Murphy’s face, knowing that despite his words, she’d already won. “It’s actually quite nice if your partner doesn’t have two left feet.”

“At least _I_ have two.”

“Hey!” laughed Clarke, and when they stepped apart they were joined by Raven and Lady Octavia, the four of them turning slowly like a lily pad in rippling water, palms up and pressed together between their heads.

“Lady Octavia, how has your sleep been? Still having nightmares?” Clarke asked conversationally over the chittering tambourine. Murphy eyed the dark bags beneath the Lady’s eyes as she danced across from him, and watched her face flicker briefly with frustration before smoothing over again into a practiced expression of graciousness.

She artfully dodged the question. “Your drafts help. I fall asleep in a wink.”

“Last night she dreamt someone ripped out her soul. Super freaky stuff.”

“Raven!” Lady Octavia hissed.

Raven shrugged, pairing off momentarily with Murphy as their foursome closed in and split up again. “You have to be honest with doctors, or else they can’t help you.”

“Not a doctor yet,” reminded Clarke, spinning about with the Lady Octavia, who maintained her elegance even as she quietly thundered over Raven’s little betrayal.

“Doctor enough,” said Raven, then did some aggressive, complicated, and definitely improper maneuver that made Murphy twirl beneath her hand and fall backwards into her, his own arms crossed over his stomach and his hands held in hers.

“I heard you nearly bested the prince in a sword fight,” Raven recalled, smiling into his face, “But you blush like a little girl.”

Murphy grumbled as she released him, untwining him from her arms and returning them to their standard, circular pacing. He just wasn’t used to all this _touching_ was all. 

“Even a little girl could best the prince in a sword fight,” he muttered.

It took Murphy a moment to realize he’d just insulted the both of them, and by the time he realized it Raven was already laughing, turning into Clarke’s path and leaving Murphy with the Lady herself.

“Hello,” she greeted, pressing her sword-blistered palm to his scratched and scuffed one, pricked by so many thorns and dragon scales.

“Hey,” said Murphy, casting his eyes away from her dark, exhausted ones as they turned together.

“You won’t tell anyone about my dreams, will you?” she whispered. “I don’t want everyone to think I’m… you know. Crazy.”

Murphy gave her his best attempt at a comforting smile. “Oh, I can keep a secret.”

“That makes one of us,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes toward Raven and Clarke as they forwent proper dancing, the both of them playing some intricate but clumsy little game with their respective good legs, their boots tapping the courtyard stone to a beat.

Raven hadn’t told him what happened to her leg, and neither had anyone else, but he learnt she’d invented a mighty impressive brace to hold it straight and walk without a crutch. Murphy remembered her flashing everything beneath her skirts to show it to him very clearly. Besides the one, it was obvious she wasn’t much for secrets.

He wondered if Lady Octavia regretted telling Raven about her magic. He wondered if she’d ever tell him. And most of all, Murphy wondered what on Earth compelled him to get involved in things he could avoid, when so far his life had been characterized by being as alone as he could stand to be.

“Listen,” he said, “I have nightmares sometimes too. So, if you ever needed anything… I would— yeah.”

Lady Octavia stared at him a moment, shadowed olive eyes desperately searching his. When she finally spoke, she whispered, “I’m glad I met you, Murphy.”

Under a setting sun and a hundred blue banners for all the kingdom to see, the Lady Octavia collided with a serving boy who had wanted to burn her castle to the ground, and held him tightly in her embrace. And the serving boy raised his arms, and hugged her back.

What a sight they must have been.

☆☆☆

Remembering his home had made the castle seem all the stranger.

Where his family might have thought that the gods were smiling down on them after catching a Winter Solstice pheasant, the feast at the height of the midsummer festival was made grand by eight courses of delicacies and two swans positioned before the high table like lovers in death. The queen’s face looked sternly out over the banquet hall through the heart formed by the swans’ slender necks. He thought it quite fitting that her gaze pierced right through a powerful symbol of love.

Murphy was still disgusted by the way they dressed their kills back up to decorate the dinner table, but was morbidly fascinated by the knowledge that the swans were no longer held up by muscle, blood, and bone— but apples, pears, parsley, and cloves.

He thought that would be nice, if nobody bled. Nice, if everything were made of apples, pears, parsley, and cloves.

Most of the evening had gone off without a hitch. Murphy stood at his new position behind the prince holding his stupid pitcher of wine, waiting for the stupid prince to raise his stupid goblet. That alone was bad enough for the soul, so Murphy was grateful there had been no murderous bards or falling candle beams or well-intentioned queens ruining his life. Yet.

Then eight ghosts came.

Not enough to haunt, but enough to make Murphy go white when the queen said, “Bellamy, dear. How goes your training of the younger knights? I want them to be well prepared for their patrols. As you know, we’ve already lost eight of our best knights just this summer to some… _creature.”_

The prince stopped swirling the wine around in his cup, as was his wont during feasts, and looked out over his knights.

The young men (and Monroe) were more well-behaved than the bards but still expectedly rowdy. As if to demonstrate, Sir Monty threw a chunk of meat pie at Sir Jasper, splattering it all over his chainmail.

“They’re ready for any mission you see fit to send us on,” declared the prince, and Murphy wished he could see whether the prince looked amused. He probably didn’t, and was sitting there sour-faced like always. “Looks can be deceiving,” he added, a funny lilt to his voice that made Murphy wonder.

“A handful of Prince Roan’s men were killed not long ago up north,” said a nobleman positioned closest to the high table. He was a pale and plump man losing what was left of the white hair snowed upon his head, and looked important, by a royal’s standards at least. 

“Looked like gulon wounds. Mauled to bits! It’s those damned druids. They feed magical creatures like mangy dogs, and like mangy dogs they keep coming back.” The man scoffed, jamming his fingers into his food. Then he lifted a finger to make a point, flinging a bit of pottage overhead. Murphy and the prince both tilted their heads to watch it soar until it smacked against the window. 

“Except it’s not the druids they maul to bits. It’s us normal folk!” he declared. “All the more reason to get them away from our villages.”

“By that you mean kill them,” said Lady Octavia, her voice just barely loud enough to be heard. Neither the prince nor the queen looked her way, the former returning to staring into his wine and the latter keeping her eyes on the nobleman. They were used to this.

The nobleman did not reply, wisely not debating the queen’s ward. The queen, however, did.

“We will find the beast that did this to our knights and any other beast that dares to lurk in Arkadia’s forests, and then we will see justice enacted upon the druids that lured them there. My son’s men will make sure of it. Won’t they, Bellamy?”

The prince was stiff in his throne. “Yes, your Majesty.”

Murphy nearly scoffed— your _Majesty._ Then he felt suddenly sad. That was the prince’s mother, and he couldn’t bear to call her so, as she sent him out to commit atrocities in the kingdom’s name.

The Lady Octavia wasn’t looking too happy herself, as what Murphy could see of her ears burned red with rage. After a loaded moment of silence, she snapped, “Would you see _justice_ done to a boy who fed a stray dog?”

“Not now, Octavia,” said the queen, still gazing regally out over the hall.

“No, tell me,” insisted Lady Octavia, drawing eyes. “Would you have him beheaded in the square? Would you burn him and his family alive?”

Murphy jumped as the queen slammed her palm against the table. It rattled violently and sent the whole banquet hall into silence. “If that dog killed eight good men? Yes, I would.”

Lady Octavia was trembling with anger. “Then you are a tyrant,” she blurted, and though her expression remained steely and sure, her skin flushed a horrified pink all over. She stood abruptly from her chair and stepped down from the dais, storming out of the hall with Raven on her heels.

The queen settled her hands on the table and calmed herself, turning a serene smile onto the rest of the banquet attendees. “We can’t all handle such fine drink,” she joked, raising her goblet. The gathering obediently laughed, calling servants to top off their wine, and all was well again.

Murphy’s heart was still thrumming as Sir Jasper called him, waving from below the dais as Sir Monty wiggled a goblet at Murphy in what he assumed was meant to be a tantalizing manner.

He stepped awkwardly to the prince’s side, refilling his cup to the brim and only spilling a little, this time. The prince glared in the general direction of the wine-stained tablecloth, the goblet, the pitcher, and Murphy’s hand, but said nothing.

“Sire,” Murphy ground out, “I’m being _summoned_ by your knights.”

The prince glanced up at Sir Jasper and Sir Monty, who had been joined by Sir Monroe and Sir Miller in wiggling their goblets at Murphy. The prince shook his head and drank, and though he tried to hide it, Murphy could see the twitch of a smile behind his goblet.

“Go,” he said, and turned his attentions toward the noblemen and noblewomen near the high table once more.

Murphy didn’t need to be told twice, leaving the dais and making long strides toward the knights’ table, who welcomed him with his very own goblet of wine. “Thought we’d rescue you from the high table drama and make good on our promise to smuggle you the good stuff,” said Sir Monty, looking somehow sly and friendly at once.

A warm feeling melted over Murphy, and for a moment, he forgot he was the stray dog that killed eight men, who they were meant to hunt down and enact justice upon. He grinned, raising his goblet. “To Arkadia’s finest knights.”

The knights flung their goblets around like wine was free, shouting, “Cheers!”

☆☆☆

“You’re fucking lying!”

“I’m not!” cried Sir Sterling.  


Sir Atom scoffed. “A hydra. In _our_ territory.”

“I’m telling you, it’s been spotted more than once! It chases people from the seashore!”

“Must have migrated here for the warm season,” Sir Monty mused.

“To have millions of hydra babies,” Sir Jasper interjected dryly, tossing stones into the bonfire.

“Do you think it mates with itself? Does it have other… you know, as well as heads?” asked Sir Miller, earning a disgusted look from Sir Atom.

“I’ll put a stop to it,” said Sir Finn, grinning as Sir Monroe shoved at his shoulder.

“All by yourself, Finn?”

“I’ll take Murphy along,” said Sir Finn. “The most fearsome manservant in all the land.”

“Hilarious,” Murphy muttered, never looking up from tracing patterns in the dirt, though a smile tugged at his lips.

“He has proven himself more than once in the short while we’ve known him,” said Sir Monroe. “I’d be glad to have him on a mission to slay a beast.”

“I think I’ll tell the prince we require his fearsome manservant’s company on the next hunting trip, what say you fellows?” asked Sir Jasper, startling Murphy.

Sir Monty chuckled. “And see him work his highness into a temper again? It’d be my pleasure.” The other knights merrily nodded their agreement, and then looked to Murphy as one.

According to the prophecy he was meant to keep the prince safe, and if there really _were_ violent magical creatures besides himself out there mauling knights…

Oh, _fine._

Besides, it wouldn’t be so bad to get out of the castle for something other than gathering herbs.

“Don’t expect me to cook, clean, or carry anything,” he warned. 

The knights all grinned, and Murphy just couldn’t fathom why everyone seemed to like him lately. Couldn’t fathom why he had friends and a home and an apprenticeship and a job and a purpose and he danced and he laughed and he drank and no one else had died.

It was almost like his curse had vanished, or else become a blessing since accepting the prophecy. That, or terrible things were nigh.

The thought didn’t frighten him. Murphy usually lived under the assumption that terrible things were nigh.

As the knights watched Sir Finn climb atop the stone he had been seated on to mime slashing every last horrible head from an imaginary hydra, applauding or criticizing his form and laughing uproariously, Murphy glanced behind him at the castle, its turrets and battlements towering high in the night sky, its white stone bathed in faint firelight from a scattering of evening bonfires surrounding the courtyard.

Sat upon the long and wide stone slab framing the stairs leading up to the castle, beneath the flickering light of a torch, Prince Bellamy was pretending to read a book.

With his legs crossed at the ankles and his book open in his lap, he looked quite comfortable lying against the slant angle of the stone stringer. It was the longing expression on his face each time he looked out over the fires that gave him away.

Murphy rolled his eyes and stood, fetching another tankard and draining a bit more than his share from a wine cask at the edge of the square. Maybe all this babysitting the prophetic prince business would go more smoothly if the prince could learn to be less of a hard-ass.

The prince who acted as if he hadn’t noticed Murphy approaching, still expertly pretending to be engrossed in his book. Though the closer Murphy came, the more he shifted, eyes staring unmoving at his page.

When Murphy had climbed a few of the steps and planted himself at Prince Bellamy’s side, he finally laid a ribbon between his pages and shut his book, quirking a brow at Murphy.

Murphy held out the wine, and the prince’s stern expression faltered as he stared at the offering.

“Are you gonna take it, or am I just gonna keep standing here with my arm out like an idiot?”

The prince took the tankard, and looked at it like he’d never seen wine before.

“You’re meant to drink it.”

“I know,” snapped the prince, raising the tankard to his lips and draining at least half of it in one go. Murphy huffed a surprised laugh, earning a glare as the prince shoved the tankard back into his chest, grumbling, “There. Happy now?”

Murphy just grinned as the prince tried to return to his book. “Come get drunk with your knights. They’re actually a lot of fun.”

“I’m the prince,” he scoffed.

“Trust me, I’m well aware.”

“So I can’t be seen off my ass with wine. I have appearances to maintain.”

“Like sitting on the stairs struggling to read. And glowering. Can’t forget the glowering.”

“I am not _struggling. Or_ glowering. _”_

“Then what’s it about? The book.”

Prince Bellamy looked down at its gold-embellished leather cover. “It’s a military treatise on policy and strategy used by Bardoans. I don’t predict warfare with Bardo but neither are we allies, so it’s good to be prepared. We have to be ready for anything and the first step in building one’s defense is knowing how your enemy fights. Especially an enemy as advanced and powerful as them.

“I’m considering adopting some of these strategies into my knights’ training regimen, I just want to choose a good selection first. Compare some of our previous fights with the battles detailed in the treatise and see where we could have made use of Bardoan strategy to overcome our opponent.”

When he was done monologuing, the prince looked up at Murphy with a perfectly straight face.

“Yeah,” said Murphy. “You really need to get drunk.”

Prince Bellamy opened his book and leaned back against his slab again. “No.”

“Yes.”

“You can try and make me,” the prince said snottily, crossing his ankles as if to stay put.

Just as he removed his bookmark, a sudden gust of wind blew his pages over. Murphy imagined the stone he lay on was also getting suddenly colder. He watched the prince struggle to pin his pages down and squirm around on the stone.

“Doesn’t a tankard of wine and a warm fire sound nice right now?”

“No it does not,” the prince snapped. Stubborn bastard.

Murphy released his enchantments and snatched the book from the prince’s hands instead. Prince Bellamy looked up sharply, very offended, his hands still holding a phantom treatise.

“It’ll raise morale,” Murphy tried. “Your men want to spend time with you.”

Prince Bellamy rolled his eyes. “They only need me to train and lead them. They don’t want me intruding on their free time.”

“Oh, you poor noble thing, you,” Murphy cooed, and then decided to nut up and grabbed the prince by his forearm. The prince nearly leapt out of his skin, staring so intensely at Murphy’s hand that his eyes might have burned him. “They do like you, for whatever reason. You’re one of them. Come live a little.”

Prince Bellamy snatched his arm away. “What does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t,” Murphy bit back. “Your pathetic attempts at reading political literature during a festival are killing my mood, is all.”

“Oh, far be it from me to ruin your evening,” the prince snarled, but was throwing his legs over the slab and standing up. Murphy grinned as the prince snatched the tankard away.

“I’ll go, if only to shut you up,” Prince Bellamy said, “but I won’t be getting drunk.”

“Of course not,” Murphy agreed, trailing after him as he stormed off toward the bonfire. When the knights spotted him and exploded into cheers, Murphy felt far more pleased than he should have at the color the prince turned, and the terribly awkward smile that bloomed on his lips.

☆☆☆

Prince Bellamy got drunk. Very, very drunk.

“I could kill a hydra. I could kill a gulon.”

“I’m sure you could,” Murphy said agreeably, nodding at the guards as they opened the doors for them and he dragged the prince through to his chambers. The room felt calm, and was dappled with candlelight.

“I could kill the Questing Beast, if I tried. I just haven’t.”

“No doubt in my mind,” said Murphy, as they trudged toward the bed and the prince slumped onto it, leaning against one of its intricately-carved posts.

Murphy thought to leave him there, figuring he’d done his job well enough. Then the prince tilted his head back to look up at the bed’s canopy, revealing unfocused eyes and a flushed freckled face.

“If there were any more dragons I would just… I would just kill them,” he boasted.

Murphy sighed, steeling himself and coming close. Prince Bellamy went abruptly still as Murphy reached for the laces of his tunic. The prince looked down and stared at Murphy’s fingers and knuckles, pale against the prince’s chest.

“Gotta get undressed. For bed,” he rationalized, as if for his own benefit. Murphy took that as permission and began to undo the laces.

He pulled the loosened tunic over the prince’s head, and then glared at his boots, belt, and breeches.

“Could you do the rest yourself?”

“Prob’ly.”

“But you won’t,” Murphy sighed. “And then you’ll be on the warpath in the morning after you’ve puked on your clothes.”

“Prob’ly.”

Murphy cursed and kneeled, yanking the boots from the prince’s feet. He stood again and went for the belt, and found the two of them were much too close for comfort. He pushed the prince’s shoulder and knocked him back, and the prince laughed as he flopped against the featherbed.

“Murphy,” he said, as Murphy unbuckled his belt and threw it, scabbard and all, to the floor. Then Murphy awkwardly went for his breeches’ laces, and was just drunk enough himself to not feel entirely clinical about the whole affair. “I saw you dancing today. Dancing and laughing.”

“Is that breaking one of your rules, sire?” Murphy asked, caustic.

Prince Bellamy’s lips pulled into a quaint smile. “No,” he answered. “I’m happy you like it here.”

Murphy went still, and after a long moment made the mistake of looking up to see the prince gazing at him, half-lidded, but affectionate and open. Murphy shook his head and yanked his breeches off, the cloth sliding between the prince’s thighs and the silk featherbed with ease, leaving him sprawled in his braies. The prince didn’t seem to much care.

Putting his back to the prince, Murphy moved to the wardrobe and rifled around for a nightshirt. Or at least, went through the motions as his mind wandered somewhere truly strange.

He was drunk. Murphy wouldn’t get his hopes up by believing there was another side to him. The prince was just drunk, and so was Murphy, and they’d hate each other again in the morning.

He found a long, thin white tunic that looked fine for sleeping beneath that absurd featherbed and returned to the prince, tapping his knee. “Up, up, your highness.”

The prince shook his head. “I hate that.”

“Hate what, sire?” Murphy asked, less sarcastic than the first time but still, always, sour.

_“That,”_ Prince Bellamy spat, throwing up a hand that came down again and smacked loudly against his chest. “I hate it when people talk to me like that.”

“You’re the prince,” Murphy said simply, giving up on his hopes that the prince would cooperate and curling a hand around his shoulder, heaving him up sitting.

Prince Bellamy’s head fell forward and thumped against Murphy’s chest. “I hate being the prince,” he murmured into Murphy’s tunic. “Hate being a knight. Hate being the heir. Hate my mother. Hate… all of it.”

Murphy thought that was pathetic. So— and he hated himself for doing it, he did— he hesitantly raised his arms, their movement stuttering in the air, and eventually managed to wrap them around the prince’s broad shoulders. The prince stiffened, and then, for the tiniest moment in all of history, seemed to come closer.

“Look, I know a thing or two about pretending to be something you’re not,” said Murphy, his voice rough and grating in the silence. He meant for it to be comforting, but comfort was kind of hit or miss with him. The prince didn’t draw away, so Murphy considered it arare success. Or perhaps the poor bastard was just too wasted to sit up again.

Candlelight rose and fell over the inky curls of his head in waves, and his knees, scarred and boyish, pressed against Murphy’s thighs. It was easy to forget he was only eighteen winters, same as Murphy, until he had been stripped down to nothing and robbed of his serious demeanor, confessions of affection and burden dripping like the good wine from his tongue.

It was easy to forget they weren’t friends, when they were drunk and it was dark.

Murphy peeled his arms away again and, as the prince seemed to have no intention of removing his face from Murphy’s tunic, let them dangle at his sides.

“You could just call me my name. You could just treat me normal,” the prince mumbled, a little unsure. “I wouldn’t have you killed.”

“How generous,” muttered Murphy.

The prince tilted his head to look up at Murphy’s face, his curls falling in his glassy eyes. He looked lost and a little desperate.

“If I don’t mind that you’re a terrible manservant,” he said, "Would you mind if I was a terrible prince?”

Murphy’s anxious stare softened, if only because he knew Prince Bellamy, off his ass on wine, could not read his expression.

“I already think you’re a terrible prince, sire.”

Prince Bellamy turned his head into Murphy’s tunic again and laughed, his breath tickling Murphy’s skin. “That’s good,” he sighed joyfully. “That’s really good.”

Eventually Murphy shook himself, making quick work of sheathing him in his nightshirt and turning over the bedclothes.

“Get under,” he demanded, and the prince obediently crawled to the head of the bed and collapsed onto the pillows. Murphy whipped the featherbed over him, burying him entirely.

He painstakingly put out all the candles and added firewood to the blaze, all the while knowing he probably could have done it all in a blink and Prince Bellamy wouldn’t have remembered a damn thing in the morning.

He was across the chambers with his hand on the door handle, making to leave, when a sleepy and muffled Prince Bellamy finally murmured, “Bye, Murphy.”

Murphy shook his head, inching the door open quietly. “Goodnight, Bellamy.”


	5. five

“Do _not_ roar at me today.”

Murphy landed at the bottom of the staircase just as the dragon descended from one of her perches, leaving him frowning as her wings blew out his torch again. She struggled to fit comfortably on a stalagmite at his level without squashing him with her tail, and Murphy appreciated that, if nothing else about the way this day was going.

Lexa didn’t look all that happy to be awake that morning either, but still smiled at him. “Does your little head hurt, Murchadh?”

Murphy winced at her thunderous voice. “Yes, my little head hurts like a bitch. Last time I ever drink with knights. So keep it down.”

The dragon obliged, saying nothing more and carefully gripping the jagged stone beneath her, shifting her weight in discomfort every few seconds. Murphy tutted at her claws and legs, her scales around the manacles flaking terribly, smeared with dark blood.

Murphy summoned stones from around the cavern and lined them up in a floating path toward Lexa’s stalagmite of choice, and she rumbled with amusement as he skipped across them in as manly a way as he could.

“The salve looks different,” she mused, as Murphy knelt beside one of her claws, bigger than his body, and lifted the leather lid from his jar.

He scooped most of the jar’s contents onto his fingers, the new balm the greenish-yellow hue of a toad. He looked up at Lexa for permission to touch, and she blinked her big eyes and looked regally away.

“I came up with the recipe for this batch myself,” he said, carefully reaching between the manacle and her scales to rub the salve on any wounds he could reach. “Calendula, lavender, blue chamomile, and beeswax. Should make the swelling go down a bit more.”

Lexa purred, and whether she was laughing at him or feeling soothed by the salve didn’t much matter. Murphy liked that sound just the same.

“Much work for a warlock capable of healing magic beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”

“I’m shit at healing magic,” Murphy insisted, gathering the dredges of the jar onto his fingers and applying them to Lexa’s friction wounds. “Thus, beeswax.”

“You may need such skills to protect the prince.”

“I don’t know how it was back in your day, but healing magic’s inherited by blood, and only your family can teach you how to tap into it. I should have learned when I was a kid. It’s too late now.”

“Perhaps there is still a way. I could help you.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” Murphy mumbled, focused on his work. “I don’t have the… you know, _heart_ for it, or whatever they say. My mom was really good at it, but I just… can’t.”

Lexa seemed unimpressed, but waited patiently and silently as Murphy summoned his next three jars of salve and tended to her next three legs. He was careful with her scales, and careful with his hands, which ached and sent waves of nausea over him whenever they brushed the cold iron.

“You have to stop struggling,” he said quietly, smoothing the last of the balm onto her hind leg. “You’re just hurting yourself.”

“I am two-hundred winters old. Do not advise me.”

Murphy stood, patting Lexa on the leg and marveling at the way a single pitch black scale dwarfed his hand. “I’m _Murchadh_ , aren’t I? Doesn’t my word count for something?”

“So when it benefits you, you are the great sorcerer, and when it does not benefit you, you are just a simple peasant boy.”

“Pretty much,” Murphy agreed, stuffing his arms full of empty jars, the swampy dredges of healing balm clinging to their insides.

Lexa made a sound like a scoff before leaning down to sniff curiously at her wounds. Murphy skipped back across his floating bridge of stones to the cliff and returned the jars to their basket, draping his blanket over them again.

“You always come at night,” said Lexa. “Why morning, today? It’s dangerous. Someone could see you.”

“I leave for a hunting trip with the prince's knights in a few hours. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone and I didn’t want you to wonder,” he explained, retrieving his torch from the ground and smacking the dust from its hilt. “And when I do return, I imagine I won’t feel up to making the world’s biggest batch of salve, climbing down the world’s longest staircase, and tending to the world’s most ungrateful dragon in the world’s wettest, smelliest cave.”

“It’s not _smelly,”_ Lexa protested, before lighting up with realization, lowering her giant head to Murphy’s feet to stare wide-eyed at him. “You’re getting along with the prince.”

“Bold accusation.”

Lexa purred. “Murchadh and the One True King, who shall unite the thirteen kingdoms and return magic to the land,” she rumbled, seemingly just because she liked the sound of it, and all that it implied for her future. Their kind’s future.

Murphy was glad about peace and all, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear about the stupid prophecy every goddamned day.

“On that note, I think I shall unite myself with the exit,” he declared, yanking his basket from the ground and making his escape toward the staircase. “Smell you later, Lex.”

“Two sides of the same coin, Murchadh!” Lexa roared. “Magic and—“

“Peace! Magic and peace! I _know!_ Gods, we’ve got to get you a hobby.”

☆☆☆

Murphy had spent twenty minutes struggling to tack up the courser. The horse snorted in his face again and he startled, dropping the bridle and swearing.

“Haven’t you ever seen a horse, Murphy?” said the prince as he approached, and took the bridle from him to gently place it on the horse’s head, and ease the bit into its mouth.

“Not so damn close,” he muttered, brushing off his hands and returning to the saddle buckles, where it was safer and there was no horse breath on his face.

Bellamy made a noise of amusement as he finished strapping up the bridle and began buckling the saddle on the horse’s other side, which Murphy was fairly certain he or the stable boy should have been doing.

“Do you know how to ride?” the prince asked.

“All I gotta do is sit. Can’t be that hard.”

Bellamy hummed obnoxiously again, patting his courser’s muscular side and turning to tack up the less terrifying mare, a normal riding horse rather than a warhorse, which had been assigned to Murphy for the trip.

“I can tack up my own horse,” he said, frowning, though it was likely that Bellamy could only see his eyes over the high back of his courser.

“I’d like to leave before sundown,” he replied over iron buckles clinking and leather straps sliding over coarse hair. Murphy sneered, mumbling choice words about the prince as he moved to the white mare’s opposite side and tied the last bag of supplies to her saddle.

When they and the knights all finally got their horse and gear-related affairs in order, Bellamy mounted his courser in one swift move and took up his reins, and the knights all did the same in quick succession.

Murphy faced his horse with no small amount of trepidation. He lifted a leg— no, that wouldn’t work. He put his hands on the saddle and tried to vault himself onto the mare’s back. He only succeeded in jumping and throwing himself against her side, shoving her sideways and making her tap her hooves in discomfort. He held onto the pommel of the saddle and took a breath, considering his next attempt.

“Take your time. No one ever accused you of being the sharpest sword in the armory, Murphy,” Sir Miller taunted, and some of the knights snickered. Murphy rolled his eyes as he wrapped an arm over the horse’s saddle.

“Quiet,” said Bellamy, and the knights did indeed fall silent. Murphy bristled. He wasn’t some damsel whose honor needed defending. Especially not by the prince.

Instead of rushing to keep up with the knights in a skill he did not possess, Murphy paused to think. None of the knights nor the prince were tall enough to simply jump onto their horses’ backs, and Murphy’s horse was even smaller than theirs. They used something for leverage. He looked down at the stirrups and sighed at the obviousness of it. He wedged his boot into the leather loop, jumped up, pushed down on the saddle, and tossed his leg over the cantle. Then he was sitting pretty.

Bellamy, to his credit, said nothing. He simply grinned Murphy’s way, and grinned wider at the dark look Murphy returned him, clicking his tongue at his horse and taking off toward the lower town and the main gates beyond.

Murphy mimicked the click and the squeeze the prince applied to his horse’s sides to get it moving, and his mare complied easily, trotting along behind the prince.

The streets of the kingdom were just filling up with people in the early morning, all of them watching in awe as their prince and his knights trotted through, and Murphy felt a little stupid and a little embarrassed to be among them, as if he was supposed to be important.

This was exactly what he hated. The waving at tax collectors. The swooning over dictators. The mindless worship of mere men who believed they were chosen ones. And now he was riding alongside them.

Murphy sighed, turning his gaze away from the people and out onto the empty plains and forests outside Arkadia’s gates, bathed in the white fog and soft sunlight of morning.

The prince eased his horse into a slower walk to fall beside Murphy, putting them both at the front of the procession. Under the white sky his cobalt cape emblazoned with the Blake crest looked mighty regal, and his chainmail glittered a little… majestically. Murphy rolled his eyes, not for the first nor the last time that day.

“What are we hunting, anyway?” he asked, expecting the answer to be boar, or deer, or rabbit, or anything besides the absurd truth. Then he thought he ought to have learned his lesson about truths by now.

Bellamy stared determinedly out at the world like he planned to fight it in its entirety, and answered, “We’re hunting the hydra.”

Perhaps not mere men after all.

☆☆☆

“This is a suicide mission,” Murphy said for the eighth time since riding out toward the western shore. Rather than reply, Prince Bellamy preoccupied himself with surveying the land and pretending Murphy didn’t exist.

“Is this some kind of royalty thing? You think you’re some kind of heroic legend, chosen by the gods?”

“Might be,” Bellamy finally answered, cheeky. Murphy was not amused.

Bellamy turned away and looked out over the forest again. “I think we are knights and we have sworn to protect our people. I think there’s a beast out there disappearing fishermen, and we're going to get rid of it. It’s our honor and our duty.”

“Just another day on the job, huh?” sneered Murphy. “Gonna kill a hydra with a couple of swords and some—” He yanked one of the supply bags open by his knee, grabbed the first thing he touched, and chunked a roll at Bellamy’s head. “—Buttered bread?!”  


Bellamy caught the roll in one hand. “That’s it,” he agreed, plain and simple.

“You people have issues.”

Murphy nudged his mare into a trot, and managed to ride alone in his private bubble of sanity for sane people about an hour longer, before the prince declared they would stop in a clearing and water their horses.

Or rather, Murphy would water them.

“I thought my terms were clear,” he argued. “I said I wasn’t doing any work if I got dragged out on a hunting trip.”

“You overestimate your importance, Murphy. I’m the boss. Fill the buckets,” Bellamy demanded, dropping two wooden pails in the dirt at Murphy’s feet.

“But—“ Murphy started, watching over his shoulder as the knights found places to stretch out in the sun-dappled grass and snack on fruits and bread.

“They need to preserve their energy for the hunt. So unless you’d like to lend some muscle and fight the hydra, I suggest you start heading for the river.”

Murphy glared, and Bellamy stared back, straight-faced and unwavering. When his eyes on Murphy’s at last became too much to stand, Murphy bent and yanked up the buckets, cursing as he stomped off into the woods.

“Oh, and be quick, Murphy,” Bellamy called after him, far too pleased with himself. “Daylight’s a’wasting.”

As he walked, Murphy cursed Bellamy and the knights and everyone else even possibly, remotely involved in making him trek across the woods to do manual labor when he could have stayed behind at the castle and slept off his hangover, at least until the doctor needed something done.

“‘Oh, we should ask the prince if Murphy can come hunting with us,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun to have him along,’ they said. ‘You won’t even have to do any work,’ they said. ‘Oh, and we’re going after the hydra!’ Fucking unbelievable,” muttered Murphy, dragging his feet through soil and pine straw as he trudged to the river.

_“I would be happy to assist.”_

Murphy yelped and flung both buckets into the brush. “Who goes there?!” he shouted, because apparently he turned into a little bridge troll when frightened.

_“Pardon me. My name is Lincoln.”_

Murphy patted around at his belt until he found his scabbard and unsheathed his knife, pointing the dagger at nothing and turning all around, searching the endless trees. “Come out,” he demanded.

Lincoln did.

He was a tower of a man dressed in plain gray and black cloth. Otherwise there wasn’t much that was notable about him. Nothing notable enough to warrant invading people’s minds and popping up in lonely forests like a ghost.

“Sorry for scaring you.” His voice was low and soothing when it came from outside Murphy’s head, but his actual speech was a little stilted and strange, and Murphy found out why when Lincoln said, “We always communicate with our thoughts, the druids. It’s been a long time since I spoke aloud. Forgive me, Murchadh.”

“Oh, not you too,” Murphy groaned, holstering his dagger and going to fetch his buckets. “Is there anyone besides me who _didn’t_ know about that stupid prophecy?”

“Stupid—?” Lincoln repeated, and though his stoic expression exposed little to nothing of what he was feeling, Murphy had a good idea that he’d probably just offended him. One tended to get decent at reading that sort of thing, when one was somebody like Murphy.

“Regardless, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this.” Murphy stooped to gather a bucket that had gotten buried in a thorny bush, and swore as its spikes clung to his clothes and skin. “Fucking prickly fucking bushes, stupid fucking thorns. Fucking thorns on everything out here. Fuck. Goddamn it.”

When he freed his bucket and detached himself from the bush, Lincoln had a funny little half-smile on his face.

“What?” Murphy snapped, crossing the small clearing to the other edge of trees.

“We all thought you would be this… otherworldly creature of magic,” admitted Lincoln, calmly watching Murphy as he jumped for the bucket that hung from a branch. “But you’re just a boy.”

“Oh, I’m much more than a boy. I'm the bucket boy,” said Murphy, grunting as he jumped, and then decided to climb the tree.

Just as Murphy was a good ways up in the tree and reaching out for the dangling pail, an invisible tendril of magic guided it off of the branch and delivered it right to Murphy’s outstretched hand. He glanced back at Lincoln on the other side of the clearing, who had at some point constructed a small staircase out of twigs beneath Murphy.

“I could have done that,” said Murphy, descending the little stick staircase. When his boots touched ground, the stairs quietly collapsed into a pile again.

“Of course,” Lincoln replied graciously. “The prophecy tells of the many winters you have had to suppress your magic. It no longer comes naturally to you, habitually, but you are still unimaginably powerful.” He offered another gentle smile. “It will be different one day. You will get to use it openly. All of us will.”

“Yeah, when the prince and I unite the kingdoms and bring back magic, yada yada yada. I know.”

Lincoln frowned. “You’re unhappy with the prophecy.”

“We have a complicated relationship.”

The druid followed on feet surprisingly quiet for his size as Murphy hefted up his buckets and started trekking toward the river again.

“My camp is nearby. We have water. Let us fill them for you.”

Murphy stopped walking and peered down into his empty buckets, considering.

“You’re not just helping me because I’m Murchadh, are you?”

Lincoln stared, his brow raised. “Of course I am.”

Murphy hesitated, then shrugged. “Fair enough,” he agreed, and waved a hand for Lincoln to lead the way.

He followed the druid for not long at all before they were stood before a great, rocky hillside blanketed in moss and ivy vines.

“Thought you said we were going to your camp,” Murphy said, tightening his grip on the handles of his buckets and preparing to run, as Lincoln wedged his hands beneath the ivy and pressed his palms to the rock.

“We are,” he replied, as the rock face faded away from the top down, tumbling apart into shivering half-images of ivy, moss, and stone until it was all gone, and Murphy was staring at the biggest druid encampment he had ever seen.

He had seen their camps in passing when he traveled with the bandit who liked to take advantage of their ever-standing offers of food and shelter, and was otherwise just fond of their peaceful and nonjudgmental nature. This camp was nothing like any of those.

There were more than tents and logs around fire pits here— there were buildings. Homes, with laundry lines and wind chimes. A hospital, quarantined beneath a shimmering blue dome of magic. Children standing with their teacher outside of a small school, drawing pictures in the air with the colorful sparks flying from their fingertips. A cookhouse with smoke tumbling from the chimney, craftsmen banging away in workshops. A group of women were stood in a circle, weaving a hilariously massive but beautiful rug in midair. 

Strangest of all, there were magical creatures abound. Stuff Murphy had only heard about in his father’s stories, or seen glimpses of in the trees.

A Caladrius was perched on the hospital roof, grooming its white feathers. A child walked past a flowerbed, and from it a foxlike earth spirit sprang to surprise them, wagging a bushy tail blooming with daisies. A few chrysaors rooted around in a trough, snorting and flapping their wings happily. Some tiny water sprites looked to be fighting over a dewdrop on a leaf just beside Murphy’s head.

Murphy opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, and when he looked to Lincoln, the druid was smiling again.

“Welcome home.”

Lincoln strode into the bustling village with confidence, and eventually glanced behind him at where Murphy still stood, shocked to stone. “Come,” he said, and so Murphy came.

He ducked beneath the huge rug as the women weaved, and stared up in awe on the other side of it as the schoolchildren combined their sparks into an intricate swirl of color and movement, working together to paint a scene in the sky. He stumbled as a fire salamander scurried through the grass and tried to climb up his leg, burning his skin as it went, until Murphy yelped and shook it off of him. And then he bumped solidly into Lincoln’s broad back, smashing his nose between the big druid’s shoulder blades.

He thought to curse at the man but held his tongue, and was glad he did as Lincoln moved aside to help tend to the fire with the little salamander, leaving Murphy stood before three much, much scarier druids.

On the left was a woman with a stern expression, and skin like midnight in summer, a shaved head and a crescent moon scar carved beneath her eye. On the right was an equally serious-looking woman of a sandy complexion, with a bush of tawny hair falling in waves around her face. And between them both was a tall, severe druid with dark, narrow eyes. Their hair, interspersed with long braids, looked like time; black as dusk at the top of their head, fading to harsh sunlight at the ends. They looked not only suspicious of Murphy, but of the sky above of them and the ground they stood on.

“Hi,” breathed Murphy.

The shorter women smiled, amused, but the tallest druid only stuck out a gloved hand for the shaking. Willing himself to act like he belonged, Murphy took it.

“It is an honor to meet you, Murchadh. My name is Anya, on my right is Indra, and on my left is Luna. We are the chieftains of this village. Our home is your home, and we live to serve you.”

Anya did not look like the kind of person to serve anyone, but said this with such firm sincerity that it shook Murphy. The prophecy was not a silly story, or the insane ramblings of a tortured dragon.

Powerful leaders knew of him. Believed in him. _Served_ him.

“You can just call me Murphy,” he said a bit dumbly, and Anya finally cracked a grin, though even that expression was still ferocious in its own right.

“I see we’ve met you quite early in your journey,” they mused, dropping his hand and looking past him, a proud glint in their eyes. “No matter. Patience is a virtue of ours.”

When Murphy turned to see what Anya was looking at, he found that every last druid in the camp was kneeling, and every creature was watching him with keen eyes.

With the speed and severity of an anvil falling on his head, it was all suddenly real. The magical world was waiting on Murphy to save it, and he was fetching water for the horses.

He tried to stutter out something to say, but found himself uselessly working his jaw again, stumbling back from the crowd. He nearly leapt out of his skin as he bumped into one of the chieftains, but Luna only curled a gentle hand around his shoulder and whispered, “This is their love. Unconditional and eternal. If you have no words, say none.”

So Murphy looked out over the kneeling druids, and tried to believe her. Their hunched bodies seemed to go on for miles in every direction. They were silent, and kept their eyes cast down in respect. This was love.

Discomfort roiled through him, but he let a grin overtake his face. “Alright,” he said. “Enough of that. Everybody up, back to business as usual, okay? I’m here on a social call.”

They obediently rose and returned to their tasks, albeit with no short amount of looking over their shoulders to gaze reverently at him.

“What goes in these buckets?” Indra asked practically, peering into Murphy’s pails and shaking him out of his daze.

“Water,” he answered, somewhat ashamed. “For the prince’s horses.”

Indra just nodded sharply and took the buckets from him, striding off. Murphy stared after her, bewildered, as Anya sat on a stone by the fire and crossed their arms over their knees.

“I never liked that the prophecy made you serve the prince,” they said.

“Anya,” scolded Luna, using her magic to finish weaving a flower chain for an eagerly awaiting child, bouncing on her bare toes beside the chieftain.

“That’s alright,” said Murphy. “I don’t like it either. He’s a jerk.”

“A jerk who is also the other side of the coin which will bring us the fate we so desire. We cannot diminish his contributions to our future,” Luna explained, softly but sternly. “You will come to care for him, Murchadh. You are bonded by the soul.” She paused. “Which is to say I assume he’ll become less of a jerk, eventually.”

Anya snorted.

“Back up. Nobody ever said anything about _souls!”_ Murphy argued.

“Oh yes. You and the One True King are of the same stardust, split in two. He embodies humanity, and you embody magic.”

“What, so he’s the most human to ever human? Very cool,” Murphy gibed, flushing red. _Of the same stardust._ Fuck that.

“Of all the irreverent children and nonbelievers, Murchadh himself has managed to desecrate the prophecy more in a few moments than all of them combined,” said Indra, returning with the buckets hovering beside her, full to the brim as she laid them to rest at his feet. Murphy almost felt chided, but the chieftains were all still smiling.

“It’s his prophecy to desecrate,” Luna joked, levitating the flower chain around the girl’s shoulders and sending her off.

Murphy feigned a little confidence and said, “Damn right.” Then he immediately discredited that confidence by blushing fiercely when the chieftains laughed. He always was far too eager to please to ever be a convincing god.

He looked one last time over the village, quiet of voices as the druids spoke within their minds, but still noisy with tinkering wind chimes and joyously snorting chrysaors. Children laughed and strange creatures flew and scampered all around, kicking up colored sparks and flowers and trails of light. _This,_ he thought. This was what he was fighting for.

Finally, he sighed, hefting up his buckets and grunting at the weight of them, until Indra took pity on him and cast her lightening charm on them, making them weigh no more than clouds in his hands.

“Better not keep his highness waiting,” he said, which was going to be his best attempt at bidding the druids goodbye. He thought if he tried saying anything more sincere, he might black out.

Anya stood, and clapped him on the shoulder with an ash-covered hand. “You and the prince are welcome here anytime. Though if he lays siege to our village, we will disarm him, restrain him, and kill all of his men.”

Murphy raised his brows, impressed. “Not that I disagree, but I thought you were a peaceful people.”

“We are,” said Luna, standing too. “But Arkadia has given us no choice. We trust in you and in the prophecy, but until that day…”

“We will not see magickind fall because we failed to defend ourselves,” finished Indra, though she inclined her head respectfully as she spoke.

“Sounds fair to me. No skin off my back if you have to kill the One True Asshole too,” agreed Murphy, smiling as the three chieftains laughed again. Then he turned toward the outskirts of the village where the illusion of the mossy rock face still ceased to be, and remembered what he was returning to.

“Hey, uh, can I ask one last thing before I go?”

☆☆☆

The western shore was a slash of black on the edge of the world. The sea seemed disturbed by a slow-approaching storm, slate waves yawning over the narrow beach, clawing it pebble by pebble into the water beneath white teeth of frothing foam.

A ways down the shore in either direction were rocky outcroppings and jagged cliffs. Murphy saw dark spots where the water was rippling but not crashing, and imagined perilous drop-offs and caves beneath the sea’s angry surface.

“Not seeing any hideous beasts,” surmised Sir Miller.

“What do you mean? I’m looking right at one,” teased Sir Monty, earning a shove.

“Maybe we should call it,” suggested Sir Monroe, raising her hands to her mouth and then faltering, realizing she had no idea what a hydra sounded like. “Well, anyway, I heard they have incredible senses. They can hear us and sense our vibrations for thousands of leagues.”

Sir Finn reached down and scooped up a few stones, and tossed them into the water.

“Is that really your best idea?” asked Bellamy. Sir Finn flicked his long hair from his eyes to give the prince a challenging look.

“Got a better one, sire?”

Bellamy glared at him a moment, just because he was the prince and he could, before he sighed and stooped to gather stones himself.

Soon enough they were all skipping stones across the troubled sea. They traded flat stones for heavy pebbles; laughed at the sounds their stones made when they smacked through the ocean’s surface beyond the waves; wound up their arms and spun in circles as if doing hammer throws, and tossed their stones backward overhead, until they forgot why they were throwing them at all.

Murphy was engaged in a silently agreed-upon competition to determine whether he or Bellamy could throw a stone the farthest— Murphy using Indra’s lightening charm, Bellamy using brute strength and determination— when the sea suddenly darkened like a dragon’s shadow had passed over it.

It must have been as wide across as the castle, sending up strange ripples. The sky growled thunderously, clouds pulsing and roiling inland as if to ward them off, but it was too late.

“Gods almighty,” whispered Sir Sterling, before the hydra rose up out of the water, all six massive heads dripping with seawater and snarling.

Its slick skin was the color of flint, its twelve eyes all as raging and tameless as the last, its maws like gashes in its eel-like heads, lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth and their forked, barbed tongues lashing out.

Murphy swallowed as its shadow fell over them.

“Hope it was worth it,” he whispered, but Bellamy was still arrogantly facing the hydra like it was only a man, and drew his sword.

_“Attack!”_ roared Sir Miller, barreling toward one of the hydra’s heads as it dove, snapping down at the shore. He made one brave slash before the hydra closed its jaws around his arm anyway and tore him into the sky.

Sir Miller’s fear was silent as the hydra thrashed him around, and each of the knights charged the beast to either rescue or avenge their friend, whichever came first. 

The red slice Sir Miller had made in one of the hydra’s necks healed instantaneously, fading away as if the beast had never been harmed at all. In fact, every stab or slash the knights made stitched closed again, and the bolt Sir Monroe fired into the head gnawing on Sir Miller only lodged there and made no difference, like the hydra hadn’t even felt it.

Then, with that maddening feeling of lightning tearing through his veins demanding he find him, Murphy spotted the prince. The prince who, with all his brute strength, determination, and many, many delusions of grandeur, had somehow ended up wrapped around one of the hydra’s long necks, and was sawing through it as the monster struggled to turn on itself and attack him.

The hydra was actually a very flexible creature, and Murphy’s hands trembled by his sides with the pressure of holding all six of the hydra’s heads away from Bellamy by their necks. The monster had since turned its many emerald eyes onto him, straining furiously against his magic, and Murphy only hoped trying not to die was keeping the knights busy enough that they wouldn’t notice where its attentions really lied.

Bellamy kept sawing. For once, Murphy knew what to expect, and his breath came quick as he watched Bellamy cling to the beast while he worked, pressing his cheek to its awful skin like he loved the thing, if only to hang on for a little longer.

When he jerked his sword through the last thread of sinew and skin, the hydra’s head fell to the water and went under with a mighty splash. For a moment, there were only five left.

And then there were seven.

_“Don’t cut off the heads!”_ the prince roared, scrabbling to the very center of the beast to escape an incredibly angry new pair of jaws, which might have been funny under any other circumstances.

In his panic, Murphy had forgotten to relay his learnings from the chieftains. As Bellamy kneeled atop the bulk of the hydra inside a bouquet of snapping heads, he remembered.

_“The hydra is a formidable beast of magic. It can hear, smell, and taste for many leagues. It is faster and stronger than any other creature in the sea. It heals its wounds instantaneously. Most importantly, every head lost becomes two more. If the One True King and his knights want to defeat it, the only way is through…”_

_“The heart!”_ Murphy cried, baring his teeth with the effort of restraining the powerful monster, and Bellamy’s desperate eyes found his. _“Go for the heart!”_

Bellamy obeyed immediately, lifting his sword high and plunging it into the beast right beneath his feet. Then he pulled his blood-slicked sword from the hydra, raised it up, and struck it again, and again, and again, stabbing the creature like he’d lost his mind.

But the prince’s eyes were not crazed. He was strong and sure as he massacred the beast, no mere man after all. Murphy steeled himself in turn. He curled his fists tighter with intention, pulsing with violent magic that seemed to strengthen with his every breath. The hydra’s mouths began to slacken, releasing knights one by one into the stormy sea as it strangled by the warlock’s hand and had its heart ravaged by the wild prince.

Bellamy struck the hydra one last time, wedging his sword deep within the creature. It made a final, desperate lunge for the knights crawling onto the beach, jaws snapping, before it collapsed — bloodthirsty and furious to the very end.

For a strange moment, seeing its huge body splayed out on the black shore as rain began to fall, Murphy felt sorry for the hydra. It was a fellow creature of magic, and he’d just helped lure it in and kill it.

But this was what it took to protect Bellamy, who surely would have died on his own. The end would have to justify the means.

Murphy realized he might not have been doing a bang up job of protecting Bellamy when he noticed he hadn’t seen the prince anywhere, and rushed toward the hydra’s corpse.

He spotted the blue corner of Bellamy’s cape beneath one of the hydra’s huge necks, which was pulsing grotesquely as something tried to squirm out from beneath it. Murphy rolled his eyes but hurried over to it, kneeling and shoving the neck off of Bellamy. Bellamy, who turned to smile at Murphy as soon as he was free. It made for a disturbing sight, as he was completely drenched in the hydra’s blood.

“Hi,” said the prince.

Murphy shook his head in disbelief. “Was it worth it?”

Bellamy’s eyes twinkled with mirth, his lashes gathering raindrops. “Didn’t take much. Couple swords and some buttered bread.”

Murphy reached out and dragged a hand down Bellamy’s face, half a slap, half cleaning his bloodied skin of sticking black rocks and sand as the rain took care of the rest. Bellamy’s lips stayed quirked, even as they both turned their gazes toward the hubbub on the shore.

Apparently the knights hadn’t heard the prince’s order about not cutting off the hydra’s heads, as Sir Jasper was cheering, standing on top of the head he’d just sawed off before the beast fell and had nothing left to regenerate with.

“I can’t believe it! I killed the hydra!” he shouted, stamping on the monster’s head. “I mean, I definitely can. I’m a well-trained knight, of course I could do it. But I just can’t believe it was _me!”_

The others clapped him on the back and showered the scrawny knight in praises, looking like they might have picked him up and carried him over their heads if they weren’t all so wounded and tired.

Murphy looked to Bellamy with a raised brow, but the prince only laughed and dropped his tired head against the rocks again, happy to let Sir Jasper take the credit. 

Exhausted himself, Murphy placed a hand on the prince’s back in wordless recognition, and together beneath the pouring rain, they took a moment to breathe.

☆☆☆

They made it back to Arkadia at nightfall. Under a star-speckled sky they rode their horses down the hill to the kingdom and through the gate.

As soon as they passed into the lower town, the church bells began to toll.

It meant nothing to Murphy but clearly something to the knights, all of them looking to the prince in alarm before kicking their coursers and bolting through town toward the castle. Murphy steeled himself and did the same, gripping his reins tightly as his mare galloped through the city.

They dismounted in the courtyard, windblown and frantic, and stormed into the castle as one mass. There were guards everywhere, running about with spears and swords drawn. 

“What the hell is going on?” the prince demanded of a passing serving boy.

“An armed stranger was seen fleeing the castle. The queen’s knights are on the chase, and here we’re all meant to be searching for accomplices,” he squeaked, before the prince’s eyes widened and he and the knights barreled past the boy to kick down doors.

They found Lady Octavia in the banquet hall, turning over tables and chairs with the guards. She gasped at the sight of Bellamy and rushed to meet him.

“I’m not hurt,” he reassured her, holding out his bloody hands as she tried to come and tend to him. She backed off reluctantly, eyeing him up and down for wounds anyway.

“Have you seen Mom?” she finally asked, her voice laden with worry.

Not the guards nor the knights flinched, proving Clarke’s theory that everyone in the castle knew who Lady Octavia really was.

Bellamy shook his head. “I’m sure she’s…” he began, and then paled. He tore out of the hall.

Murphy and the knights chased him up the spiraling stairs, seemingly forever, until they reached the grand hall the queen had to herself. 

Her guards were dead on the floor, her doors flung open. Bellamy scrambled to get inside, and then froze between them.

A serving girl was standing just beside the doors, trembling so hard that water was sloshing over the sides of the pitcher she held.

Queen Aurora was lying in a puddle of blood, still blooming like a crown of roses around her head.


	6. six

Murphy never thought he would have been grateful that his mother died, until Bellamy’s didn’t.

Physicians and surgeons came from all over to help Doctor Abby save the queen. 

They anointed her with rose oil, vinegar and powdered myrtle. Then they made incisions. Plucked the fragments of bone from her brain where she’d been bludgeoned. Stitched her scalp back up as best they could.

She opened her eyes, one day. Then she never did anything else.

They tried everything. They pricked her with needles. They held incense and spices beneath her nose. They rang bells in her ears. Priests prayed and cleansed her chambers of evil. They tried letting blood, to see if the spirits or the spell would leave her. Everything short of trepidation— the subtle art of burring holes into the head— which Prince Bellamy would not permit, they tried. Nothing roused her.

She knew to breathe, and to close her eyes when she slept, which was most of the time. Like a child, her hands opened ever so slightly to hold when something was pressed into them. On the haunting occasion she seemed to smile, but never because anyone had said something particularly funny.

Her serving girls moved her between her bed and an armchair facing her window, looking out over the kingdom. It was impossible to tell whether she cared either way. Her eyes wandered slowly, unseeing.

When she was given soft foods and liquids, she swallowed. This was how she would survive.

Murphy sat in the window as Bellamy read to her. Not a treatise or a historical record, but poetry, nowadays. Songs of adventure, of love and of loss.

Murphy rested his head against the arch of the window frame, pinning velvet curtains between it and his ear. He stared out at the streets, dappled with what little white sunlight was spilling through heavy clouds.

The queen had not died, but Arkadia was slow, sad, and dull as if she had, its people moving forlornly through gray streets as if tumbling along in a foggy winter stream.

The world would not wait for Queen Aurora to wake up, and so Prince Bellamy had assumed the throne as acting regent. In every way but name, he was king.

Murphy was thinking about what this meant for them— for the prophecy— when Bellamy’s deep voice suddenly cracked, letters falling from their poems, and he struggled to find his line again as the book trembled in his hands.

Murphy stood and closed the book, taking it gently from the prince’s hands. He placed it on the table between the armchairs and said, quietly, “Court awaits, sire.”

Bellamy took the hint and stood as well, collecting himself enough to lean over and lay a kiss upon the queen’s sutured and stubbled head.

They made it out of her chambers, through the hall, down several flights of stairs, and to the courtroom door before Bellamy stopped to hold the wall and cover his face, shoulders shaking something terrible.

Murphy shifted on his feet, unsure.

It had been a month of this. He had comforted the prince as best he could from afar. Empathetic looks and careful touches of the shoulder. Taking some of the simpler royal duties upon himself, and undressing the prince when he cried himself to sleep atop the featherbed in scabbard, circlet, and all. Indulging him with more wine than likely suitable for a regent who could barely hold it.

“Sorry,” the prince sniffed pitifully, tears collecting on the edge of his gloved hand as he tried to force them back into his eyes and, eventually, spilling over the black leather in little streams.

Murphy sighed and approached the prince, who subtly turned his back to Murphy, facing the wall like a child. 

So Murphy steeled himself, and then opened his arms and wrapped the stubborn prince in the circle of them, front pressed to back, resting his chin on Bellamy’s shoulder. 

The prince stiffened, his breath stuttering out as he tried fruitlessly to hold it. Finally, he ground out, “What are you doing?”

Murphy’s heart pounded fiercely against Bellamy’s back, but he didn’t let go. He rolled his eyes and said, “Trying something.”

“Well, stop trying it,” Bellamy sniffed, though he did not fight Murphy’s embrace. In fact, his bunched muscles seemed to ease and settle against Murphy’s chest, his tunic shifting less and less as he mimicked Murphy’s steady breathing beside his ear.

“It wasn’t your fault,” murmured Murphy. 

For a moment, Bellamy tensed again, before turning slowly around in Murphy’s arms and resting his temple against Murphy’s. He did not hug Murphy back, but simply allowed himself to be held. Just like he had on the midsummer night they were wasted on wine.

Murphy wasn’t sure whether that was better— the prince letting Murphy’s care be an act of service and nothing more— or if he was aching to feel his touch returned.

“You don’t get paid enough for all this,” the prince sighed, and Murphy shivered as Bellamy’s breath ghosted over his neck.

“Does that mean I’m getting a raise?”

“No.”

Murphy blurted a laugh, and though Bellamy’s joy was soundless, his chest stuttered against Murphy’s too.

He was disturbed to find that this felt normal. Felt right.

At last Bellamy peeled away, wiping roughly the tears from his flushed face. He gave a watery smile as Murphy reached up and straightened his ever-crooked circlet.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Dashing, Prince Regent,” said Murphy.

As Bellamy turned to bravely enter the courtroom, Murphy silently and discreetly laid a small spell upon him. By the time he reached the end of the room, the prince’s eyes would be dry, and so too would the teardrops fade from his tunic.

With Murphy he could be Bellamy, crying and crooked— but on the throne, he had to be a king.

☆☆☆

A good chunk of the rest of Murphy’s day was spent running errands for the doctor. He delivered a hyssop remedy to a very sad widow, who wept appreciatively as Murphy mixed it into wine for her. An oregano tincture to a whole household of children down with colds, three of which sneezed on him as he dosed them. Aloe for a shopkeeper’s hemorrhoids, who was far too comfortable making Murphy privy to all the gruesome details.

It was safe to say that by the time he returned to the castle, he was done with all of it. But that just wasn’t how things worked out for Murphy.

He was headed for the doctor’s chambers and just passing the throne room when raised voices rang out, and he withered to recognize one of them as Bellamy’s, officially making it Murphy’s business.

The Lady Octavia sounded furious. “Ten violent criminals presented for your judgment at court and the only one you’ve put on the chopping block is the sorcerer among them. Want to tell me honestly why that is?”

“That sorcerer was conjuring counterfeit gold.”

“You’ve spared the rest of the liars and thieves!”

“Those liars and thieves weren’t sowing discord, spreading fear.”

The Lady Octavia laughed, and the sound was burning, crumbling in its rage. “I thought it would be different with you in charge, but I guess I was wrong. You sound just like her.”

“Maybe because she was right. I won’t let this kingdom fall apart the moment it’s been passed to my hands, and I won’t reject her vision for it based on your childish dreams.”

“My wanting to keep innocent people from being killed is a childish dream?”

“They’re not innocent. They’re not even people.”

“You’re wrong, Bellamy.” Lady Octavia’s voice trembled.

Bellamy scoffed. “You’re naïve.”

“You are a _puppet!”_ the Lady shouted. “You just do whatever you’re told and call it duty. Doesn’t matter whether it’s right or wrong. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you think for yourself.”

“It’s called a sense of responsibility, O. I think it would do you good,” said the prince, his heavy footsteps approaching the doors as if to leave.

“What if I were a sorcerer? Huh?” asked the Lady, her footsteps following as Bellamy’s stopped in their tracks, her voice lowering dangerously. “Would you do it? Would you kill me?”

“You’re not a sorcerer. Get out of my face, Octavia. I won’t listen to this.”

“If I were. Would you behead me? Would you burn me, big brother? Tell me.”

“Stop it.”

_“Tell me!”_

Murphy’s magic seemed to thump, stirring awake at some sense of impending danger. He pushed the doors in.

The siblings were standing alone in the center of the room, framed on either side by their royal seats upon the dais, the monarch’s looming throne encompassing their figures both. The prince’s arms were crossed and the Lady’s fists were clenched, the both of their sharp, regal jaws rippling under skin as they stared each other down. There were so few inches between them, and that narrow space seemed to wriggle like the world over hot steel, trembling with rage and, more than likely, magic.

“Everything okay in here?” asked Murphy.

For a long moment no answer came. At last the prince ground out, “Just fine.”

As if realizing something she had been pondering over her entire life, the Lady Octavia slowly began to nod her head.

“Just fine,” she repeated. “It’s always _just fine_ to you. You’ll write me off, just like Mom did. Shut me away, lie about me, treat me like a ghost. Just for the crime of being born. It’ll never end, will it?”

“That’s enough, O,” said Bellamy, rolling his eyes, but Murphy could have sworn he heard the prince’s heart thundering in his chest from all the way across the room. “All this over a sorcerer.”

“No, it’s more than that. I’m just… done,” she said, and her thunderstorm eyes seemed to clear as a chilling sort of calm washed over her. “With all of this. The nightmares, the killing, the secrets.” The Lady Octavia took a step back, and then another, and another. “I’m done.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Bellamy said, his voice breaking as he watched her go. “The sorcerer dies tonight on my order. Stay in your room.”

“One day you’ll wish you had listened to me,” warned Lady Octavia, looking at her brother one last time over her shoulder. Then she tore open the door to the antechamber and fled, revealing the girl in the red bodice in her wake, who had been listening on the other side of the door.

Murphy met eyes with Raven, her face sallow with fear, before she whisked off after her charge.

Bellamy hung his head and went for the opposite antechamber door. “Don’t follow me Murphy,” he said, his voice gruff. “I need to be alone.”

For once, Murphy obeyed.

☆☆☆

“Whatever she’s going to do…“

“We have to stop her,” agreed Raven, the both of them storming down the hall to catch up to the queen’s ward, always watching the trail of her lilac gown disappearing around corners.

Their boots pounded against stone, but Raven’s limp was slowing them down. Soon they couldn’t see the Lady Octavia at all anymore. He thought to go on and let Raven catch up, but the maidservant and blacksmith was determined, her face carved with hard, grim lines as she hunted down her charge, her friend, and Murphy couldn’t do this without her. So he stayed by her side, and she stayed by his. They were in this together.

If only Clarke were there too, things might have gone differently. Or perhaps it was another cruel, inevitable destiny, and nothing would have changed. Murphy hated destiny.

Raven bunched up more of her skirt and hefted it even higher until it cleared the floor completely, allowing her leg more room to move. Her brace shuddered as she stomped onward.

She wouldn’t let it show, but Murphy knew, despite her love, that she was terrified of Lady Octavia. Of what she might be capable of.

“Murphy, there are things you don’t know about her, and I can’t—“

“I know,” was all Murphy said. “I know.”

Raven stared sideways at him as they half-walked, half-ran, and Murphy met her gaze, silently asking for trust.

He knew what it was.

It was raising a child in isolation because that crying infant brought buildings down. It was a dragon chained beneath the castle and a city of druids hidden behind moss and ivy. It was a veil in the sky, and a deadly curse, and a great prophecy. It was letting witches and warlocks burn when you could stop it right there, right then. It was maddening power simmering just under the surface, and still snuffing out the prince’s flames with a fucking douter.

Gods, did he know about secrets.

When they rounded the last corner and approached Lady Octavia’s doors, her guards were gone.

“Come in, Raven,” said the Lady when Raven knocked, her voice muffled and a bit frantic. Raven did, and Murphy slipped in behind her, closing the doors beneath his back.

A chest was open, the Lady’s belongings strewn out of it, across the floor and over the bed. She was kneeling, struggling to stuff a gown into a leather traveling sack, wearing a cloak and a sword’s scabbard over her dress. There was a lantern on the table, a costrel of water and a sack of food.

Lady Octavia looked at Murphy with her mouth agape as if to argue against his presence, before her eyes fell to the leather belt and scabbard around his waist. ‘ _Would you deprive me of this small joy, Murphy?’_ Her mouth shut again and she returned to jamming her gown into her traveling sack.

“Where will you go?” Raven sighed, shaking her head.

“Anywhere but here,” snapped the Lady.

“You’ll die out there.”

“I have magic. I’ll be fine.”

Despite Murphy’s reassurances that he already he knew, her frankness alarmed both of them. Raven glanced nervously at Murphy, and Murphy glanced back at her, trying to convey that they needn’t worry about him. Though it didn’t much seem like the Lady cared what anyone had to say about her now.

“This was a long time coming, Raven,” said Lady Octavia. “I’m sick of being an unspeakable thing.”

“Don’t do this,” Raven begged her, clutching at her own heart. “I love you, Octavia.”

Lady Octavia’s hands shook, her breath coming quickly, and she suddenly yanked the difficult gown from her bag, crying out in frustration and flinging it across her chambers. It shredded itself in midair, blue silk tumbling in ribbons all around them like a heavy rain.

Raven’s chest heaved at the display, tears springing to her eyes, and Lady Octavia seemed to wilt after her outburst. She worked to catch her breath and calm her rage for her best friend’s sake. When she finally collected herself somewhat she rushed to them, taking her maidservant by the shoulders.

“Come with me,” she said frantically, looking between Raven and Murphy both. “We can be free of this awful place. The three of us. Clarke could come, too. We could— we could—“

She trailed off, her eyes wild as she looked desperately between them. Gently and tearfully, Raven pushed Lady Octavia’s hands from her shoulders and stepped away, shaking her head.

Lady Octavia looked as if she’d been struck through the heart, her hands still holding the space where Raven had stood. Eventually, she curled her arms protectively against her chest, becoming small.

Murphy’s magic was pounding in his ears when she looked to him for an answer.

“I…” he whispered, searching her eyes. “I can’t, Octavia.”

She worked her jaw as tears spilled over, and turned to retrieve her things, strapping her bags over her shoulders.

“Then I’ll be going now,” she said, stepping toward the door.

Murphy and Raven didn’t move, still blocking her exit, and Murphy could feel it. The sand hitting the bottom of an hourglass.

“Move,” she whispered.

Raven had only time enough to reach out with a trembling hand before Octavia exploded, screaming out, _“Move!”_

An invisible wave of power crashed over them, fierce and violent, nothing at all like a butterfly’s wings knitting together between the Lady’s palms.

With a desperate thought he softened their landings, but Murphy and Raven still flew in opposite directions, Raven’s head and brace striking the wall to their right with a horrible clang of steel upon stone, Murphy slamming and crumpling against the wall to their left.

When he opened his eyes the world was spinning, his ears were ringing, and Octavia was long gone.

He crawled to the crumpled mound of red silk and dark hair across the chambers, whispering her name.

When he had dragged himself close enough he carefully sat Raven up and peeled all the thick, fallen hair from her tear-stained face. There was no blood, no broken bones.

Aching, he scooted up beside Raven and laid his head upon her shoulder. She rested her head against his, and she cried.

No blood. No broken bones. Still hurt like hell.

☆☆☆

Despite the news of his sister leaving, Prince Bellamy stayed true to his word and had the chopping block pulled out into the square that night.

It made Murphy sick, now, to think that he had danced there, under the blue and white banners of the sword and the twining vine, like the cobblestone wasn’t stained with the blood of his kin.

With the queen confined to her armchair and the Lady in the wind, he and Bellamy stood alone on the castle balcony, overlooking the courtyard as the crowd slowly gathered.

The sun was nearly finished setting, night leaving no more than a sliver of blood orange along the horizon like a gash in the black sky. The courtyard was quiet and slanted in long shadows.

They dragged the sorcerer out in chains and laid his head upon the block. The masked executioner readied his axe.

The prince regent was not as keen on grand speeches as his mother. At the disadvantage of not scaring the everliving hell out of his citizens, but at the gain of not feeling as much like a villain, despite overlooking a beheading.

“The man before you has committed fraud and engaged in the practice of sorcery. The latter crime demands the punishment of death. As it has been, and will continue to be in Arkadia,” the prince said shortly and without fanfare. ”Executioner,” he prompted.

His jaw ticked, but otherwise the prince appeared unmoved. Murphy knew better, but at times like these, he remembered why he’d once hated Bellamy so much. Now, he hated them both.

The executioner hefted up his axe and the sorcerer began to quietly weep, soiling himself, like most people did.

Bellamy didn’t look away. Neither did Murphy.

The axe fell. And then it stopped.

With the mere length of an eyelash between the axe’s blade and the sorcerer’s throat, the executioner stood frozen.

“What the hell’s going on?” Bellamy asked, and Murphy stepped to the edge of the balcony, leaning over the railing.

A cloaked figure emerged from the shadows beneath the balcony, and entered the circle formed by the crowd. With a single finger on the frozen axe blade, they lifted the weapon away from the sorcerer’s neck, taking him by the trembling shoulder and leading him away from the block. 

Though the cruel box of cold iron encasing his hands went unpunished, the rest of his chains shattered, leaving the courtyard scattered with shards of black iron.

The figure turned to the crowd and lowered their hood, and the crowd gasped.

Bellamy closed his eyes as Octavia raised her hands. The black shards of broken chains floated up around her, shivering in midair above their heads. The people screamed, but Octavia spoke right over them, unflinching.

“I am the daughter of Aurora Blake. I am your princess. And I am a sorcerer. I have watched tyrants make corpses of your neighbors, and graveyards of peaceful villages. I have watched them lie and torture and murder to keep you beneath their thumb."

She turned, and looked up at the two of them on the balcony.

"I am Octavia Blake, and Arkadia’s throne will be mine.”

The black shards fell and the executioner stumbled, his axe catching on the empty block. Octavia and the crying sorcerer vanished, not a trace of them left, save for a crimson butterfly perched on a cobblestone, gently flapping its wings.


	7. seven

Murphy hadn’t worried much about himself, or how his own life might change, when he was so busy keeping up with Bellamy and his.

Then one morning Murphy woke, and Clarke’s leg had healed.

He smiled from his pallet of quilts before the fireplace as he sat up on his knees, watching Clarke rub hands up and down her pale leg, free from its braces of sticks and cloth.

She didn’t mind that Murphy saw so much of her skin, or that she was still in her nightgown with her hair all askew. They’d practically become brother and sister after almost three moons of sleeping by the same fire, eating at the same table, sharing knowing looks across the banquet hall, mixing tonics and tinctures together, and grieving their friend.

With her back to him as she faced the kitchen window and tended to the plants on the sill, Abby said, “As per our deal, I’m relieving you of your… apprenticeship. You’ve done more than enough to repay me." Then she paused, lowering her hands to the wooden counter. “I want you to know there’s still a place for you here, Murphy. If you’d like to stay.”

Murphy stared at the doctor’s tensed shoulders where he kneeled in front of the fireplace, down to its morning ashes, and a sudden swell of emotion overcame him.

Clarke was practically his sister, and Abby, practically his mother.

“Thanks, but I’ve got perfectly good servants’ quarters waiting for me. No reason to keep freeloading here,” Murphy croaked, gesturing at the pile of quilts around his feet as he stood and began gathering the blankets, trying to ignore Clarke’s sad eyes. “Besides, whether he’ll admit or not, Bellamy needs… Well, it’d be good for him to have someone nearby right now, you know?”

Abby turned and nodded, watching him with wet eyes, before she quickly crossed the room and stood atop his pallet, her hands hovering by his shoulders. Then she pulled Murphy into her arms, pinning his head to her shoulder with a gentle hand on his hair, pressing him as close as she could the way mothers did.

Murphy hesitated, and then raised his arms and tentatively, carefully, hugged the doctor back.

“It’s been so hard since last winter, when Clarke’s father died. But you brought laughter into this house, Murphy. You made things easier,” said Abby, and her voice shook, but her words lost no firmness, no surety. “I want you to know that you’re family now. If you ever need anything, you come right back here. You hear me?”

Murphy blinked back tears. “Right back here.”  


“As if I’m missing out on a Murphy hug,” Clarke said tearfully, jumping up and knocking their heads together as she wrapped her arms around them both. The three of them all laughed, and for a moment, Murphy felt it again.

This was love.

☆☆☆

“And you’ll invite me for sleepovers all the time?” said Clarke, as they made their way past the prince’s doors and toward the servants' quarters, the hall cast in blocks of afternoon sunlight like melting butter, warm on the stone.

“All the time,” said Murphy, hugging his few personal effects to his chest. “We can try on pretty dresses and talk about boys ’til the sun comes up.”  


“I’m holding you to that,” Clarke replied seriously, nudging the antechamber door open with her finally usable foot.

The room she revealed was a humble thing, boasting only a rickety hay bed by a wood stove and a little kitchenette beneath a small window.

It was a humble thing, but it was Murphy’s.

“I like this,” said Clarke, swinging around a weird stone column in the middle of the little room. “Imagine how many people will run into it. Entertainment for days.”

Murphy snorted. “Yeah, I’ll have to warn all those guests I so often have,” he said, tossing his quilt, his stack of clothes, and his work belt onto the bed. Then he placed his little potted calla lily in the windowsill. A housewarming gift from Abby. Murphy smiled at the halos of sunlight draped around the curling white petals.

“All those suitors you'll bring home, more like.”

“Murphy and suitors,” scoffed a familiar and unwelcome voice, standing in the doorway that connected his chambers with Murphy’s, his ridiculous arms crossed.

“I bag suitors. I bag tons of suitors,” Murphy protested, cheeks and ears burning. What, did Bellamy think he was unattractive?

“Well, just you and your tons of suitors keep it down. I heard the neighbors like their peace and quiet.”

“I heard the neighbors snore like a motherfucker,” Murphy remarked, opening the cabinets in his kitchenette to see if there was anything other than dust inside.

“Excuse me?” blurted Bellamy, falling out of character. “I do not snore.”

“You do. You’re doing it every morning when I bring breakfast. Like a big, growling dog,” said Murphy. “A dog with horrible breath.”

Suddenly Murphy was shrouded in darkness, his quilt having been slammed over his head. He fought the blanket off of him and glared, flushed, at Bellamy’s taunting face. His face that split into shocked laughter as Murphy balled the quilt up and flung it back at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.

Then they were pinned against the unnecessary column, Bellamy’s arm hooked around Murphy’s neck. Then against the kitchenette counter, where Murphy jumped on his back and hiked his legs up to cling on, prompting Bellamy to back them up against the wall and squash Murphy between it and his body, knocking the breath from them both.

They were on the floor when Murphy finally looked up long enough to see Clarke’s bewildered but amused expression, as she backed carefully out of the servants' quarters turned battlefield. “Your royal highness. Murphy,” she bade them each. “Have fun with your new roommate.”

“I miss you already! Don’t leave me with this madman!” Murphy cried as she closed the door, before Bellamy gripped the front of his tunic and yanked him down, rolling them over.

Murphy laughed as Bellamy pinned him to the floor, his tunic fisted tightly in both of the prince’s hands. “Should I expect you to beat the shit out of me every afternoon, your highness?”

Bellamy didn’t quite smile, but his eyes still twinkled in that way they did. Murphy’s gaze wandered, flitting over his chestnut eyes and the freckles on his nose and the groove in his lip, and Bellamy’s stare roved over him too.

“Yes,” said Bellamy. “It soothes me to punch you in the face.”

Murphy smiled, and Bellamy’s eyes fluttered.

Then a rapping came at the doors of Bellamy’s chambers in the room over and Bellamy abruptly let go of Murphy, sitting up on his knees. Murphy straightened up too, patting down his disheveled hair and clothes, willing the warmth to leave his face.

Bellamy cleared his throat before calling out, “What is it?”

“Your royal highness,” said the muffled voice at Bellamy’s doors, “There’s an emergency. It’s the crops.”

The prince knit his brows. “Whose crops?”

“…All of them, sire.”

☆☆☆

Murphy and Bellamy stood before leagues and leagues of blackened field, flames leisurely licking what was left of the edges.

This was only one of many farms in Arkadia that had burned to the ground overnight.

Murphy approached the broken and black corpse of a corn stalk, gently trying to straighten it. The stalk stood up for a moment before it cracked in half and crumbled to the ground, leaving a smear of ash on Murphy’s fingers.

“This is clearly the work of a sorcerer,” barked the enraged farmer, who had finally finished weeping and moved on to fury. “You need to get your kingdom under control!”

“I assure you we’re doing everything we can to figure out what’s going on,” Bellamy said magnanimously.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on! It’s that witch sister of yours and her crazed followers. First the Bastet. Then the poison fog. Hurricanes. Blood in the water. Those… _worm_ creatures. A sandstorm. Now our farms _burned!_ I can’t imagine we’ll survive what she and her little cult of sorcerers curse us with next.” The farmer shook his head. “That monster needs to be brought to justice, I don’t care who she is to you.”  


Bellamy snarled. “How about _I_ worry about delivering justice and you stick to farming.”

“Do I look like I got a farm left to worry about, your royal _highness?”_ snapped the farmer, gesturing sharply at his razed fields.

“This is what she wants,” Murphy murmured, straightening up and turning to face them fully as the prince and the farmer got in each other’s faces. “She wants you all to turn on the prince. While we’re weakened and you all blame him for her deeds, she’ll take the kingdom. You want that ‘monster’ to be your new regent?”

The farmer had the good sense to look chastised, and even stubborn Bellamy backed off.

“We’ll see what reparations the coffers can spare. There won’t be replanting here anytime soon if ever, as I’m sure you know, so I suggest you seek a new occupation for now. We’ll have to find other ways of feeding the kingdom. I’m sure you’d make a fine fisherman,” Murphy said, attempting to be diplomatic even if it sort of made his teeth ache.

“Yeah right. Nothin’ keeping me here anymore,” replied the farmer, yanking his hoe from the blackened earth. “Don’t see why anyone in their right mind would stay. I think I’ll be headin’ to Eligius.”

“You sure about that? Highest crime rates of any of the kingdoms. About a million bandits from here to there,” warned Murphy. “And I hear they’ve all come down with some kind of sickness of the lungs.”

“The Ice Kingdom, then.”

“No work for a farmer up there. Only a few moons when it’s warm enough to grow anything.”

“Mount Weather.”

“Magical beast infestation. Crawling with some flesh-eating humanoids.”

“Kingdom of Light.”

“Religious fanatics.”

“Sanctum.”  


“Also religious fanatics.”

“Bardo.”

“Would you believe me if I said religious fanatics?”

“Well what exactly is Arkadia boastin’ besides a bunch of curses, huh?” the farmer cried, pointing the end of his hoe at Murphy, who was too tired and frankly annoyed at this point to flinch.  


“A massive army. Powerful allies and trade partners. No plagues. And a regent who gives a shit about you.”

The farmer looked to where Bellamy was standing with his arms crossed, scowling, and snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“The way you’re talking, any other king would have had your head by now. Not to mention the prince regent came all the way down here himself and offered to compensate you for the losses you suffered. But go ahead and fuck off to the Kingdom of Light, see if they’re nicer to you over there. Save us some money.”

The farmer stood there a moment longer, torn between fuming and considering, before he scoffed and turned to stomp off toward his barn.

Murphy raised his brows and brushed the ash from his hands, putting the dead fields to his back only to find Bellamy staring at him, arms still tightly crossed over his chest.

“What?” Murphy asked, rolling his eyes and starting his trudge uphill.

“You shouldn’t have said all that.”

“Oh, the coffers are fine. We can spare some coins for the poor asshole.”

“No,” said Bellamy, stepping in Murphy’s path, startling him. “I can’t have my servant speaking for me. It makes me look weak and indecisive. Next time, I’ll do the talking. We clear?”

Murphy was taken aback by that. “Is that all I am? A servant?”

“What did you think you were?” Bellamy snapped. “My advisor? My partner? What do you know about running a kingdom?”

Murphy was surprised by how much that hurt. “What do _you_ know about running a kingdom?” he bit back.

“I am the crown prince and regent. I was born for this. Raised for this. I have trained every day of my life for this. You’re just… just—“

“A peasant?”

“I wasn’t gonna say that,” Bellamy sighed, reaching for Murphy’s arm, who jerked it away.

“No, I get it. You’re the _prince regent._ I guess I let all those days spent helping you run this place get to my head.” Murphy gave a barbed smile. “I’ll remember to keep my mouth shut from now on, sire.”

Bellamy flinched at the title. “Come on, Murphy. Don’t be like that.”

“I’ll see you later. Pressing peasant business to attend to,” muttered Murphy. Then he hiked up the hill from the farm, leaving Bellamy and his crooked circlet behind.

His mistake, forgetting that Bellamy Blake would always be a royal jackass.

☆☆☆

It was tedious work, dragging dead animals through the castle at night.

Every few feet Murphy had to release his lightening charm and drop the cow’s knobby knees, vanishing the long red streak of blood that was following them.

It wasn’t much. The cow had been put down shortly before Murphy nicked it from the butcher and stowed it away. Now he used every trembling, confused, and unpracticed illusion charm he could fathom up to get it from his antechamber to the dungeon without being seen.

His life had gotten so supremely stupid, lately.

Murphy melted the iron lock and untangled the chains, floated the carcass down the thousand stairs, and followed awkwardly after it. At least the dragon was used to him entering corpse-first.

At the bottom, in the dark of the cave, Lexa unwound herself from a massive black ball on the plinth and inspected the carcass with interest.

“You’d think the queen would have made arrangements to have the giant dragon under the castle fed should tragedy befall her,” Murphy snarked, nudging the carcass closer to Lexa’s snout. “Don’t want _you_ getting hangry.”

“The queen’s butcher never brought anything fresh. Always rotten.” Lexa tucked the cow under her chin and drew it carefully toward her, her eyes on Murphy. “Thank you.”

Murphy kicked a stone. “Yeah, well.”

Then Lexa dug in, trying her best to be quiet and polite as she tore through flesh and muscle and bone with her huge jagged teeth. She wasn’t quite succeeding, and Murphy cringed and turned his back to her, busying himself with drawing patterns in the dust on a shelf in the cavern wall.

“How is the prince?” asked Lexa, careful not to speak with her mouth full, and Murphy frowned at the beast having more manners than he did.

“A giant raging ungrateful jackass,” Murphy snarled, punctuated by a hurled rock clattering against a stalagmite, the sharp little sound echoing over and over. “ _I_ got the Bastet out of the kingdom. _I_ made the dome that kept out the poison fog. _I_ stopped the floodwater from the hurricanes. _I_ broke the curse that was turning the water into blood. _I_ killed all those fucking flesh-burrowing worm things. _I_ stopped the wind during the sandstorm.”

And Murphy had tried to revive the burned farms, he had.

After he’d left Bellamy behind, he’d gone to the edge of one of the Arkadian farmer’s razed plots. He’d taken a deep breath, raised his arms, and thought of nourishment, of growth and of life. As if time were reversing, the broken, black stalks of wheat built themselves up again, unfurling tall and golden, swaying gently for miles.

Then Murphy’s hands shook, the muscles in his arms ached, and he felt the light that bloomed in him short out and die. The gold overtaking the black halted in its crawl and receded, burning back toward Murphy in a furious, dark roll until it was all dead again.

Octavia was building her army, fortifying her curses, getting stronger. Stronger than Murphy.

Lexa rumbled sympathetically. “He can’t know about your magic. He isn’t ready.”

“It isn’t just about the magic. I— I took care of him!” Murphy shouted, and went red all over as he whipped his head over his shoulder and saw Lexa peering at him knowingly. “Not— I just— I mean…”

Murphy sighed. “All this time, I’ve helped take care of his mother, who I would obviously rather let die. I’ve helped him write all his stupid speeches and make his stupid plans. I’ve gone all over the kingdom with him, talking to villagers and noblemen and farmers and merchants about all the soul-crushing, boring shit, like _crops_ and _trade_. I’ve stood by his side as he executed sorcerers. I know as much about this place as he does. I’ve put as much of my blood into it now as he has. And he just…”

Murphy stared at the heifer’s skeleton, picked clean.

“Everything I do is for him, and he just thinks I’m an idiot.”

Lexa blinked slowly at him, lowering her head for him to come and run his hands over her flint scales. She closed her eyes as he did so, and Murphy watched his own pale fingers sweep over her snout and between her eyes, beneath her horns and ears, trying not to feel too sorry for himself. 

He clearly hadn’t done a fantastic job, as Lexa rumbled, “You are Murchadh. You’re worshipped by every creature of magic. Why does it matter so much what one man thinks of you?”

Murphy swiped his hand beneath his nose, feigning disinterest. “It doesn’t. Just wouldn’t hurt to get some recognition around here. Anyone can save magickind, but mucking the crap out of the royal stables? I deserve a fucking medal.”

Lexa made a rockslide sound like laughter, and it shook every ounce of Murphy, the whole cave vibrating with it, the white glowworm silk hanging overhead trembling as if giggling too. Murphy smiled and shook his head, pressing his forehead to Lexa’s snout, even if it reeked of blood.

He hated all this soul-bond nonsense, but he was starting to understand. Being near the druids, near Lexa, made that white light in him unfurl. It must have gone both ways as Lexa, who was so unhappy, always laughed with Murphy around.

Maybe that light was why Octavia had taken to him so quickly, too. Why it had hurt her so badly when he said he wouldn’t run away with her.

As if reading his mind— which Murphy often suspected she could— Lexa purred, “You miss your friend.”

He nodded against her, pursing his lips. “Yeah.”

“I knew a powerful witch would be your greatest adversary,” admitted Lexa. “I did not know it would be her. I’m sorry.”

“The princess of Arkadia. I guess even the gods like a bit of irony,” Murphy snorted, and then sobered as he fiddled with the leather scabbard on his belt. “It’ll be hard to kill her.”

Lexa blinked her eyes open. “You’ve decided to take her life?”

“You got any better ideas for how to stop her? If she can’t take the throne, she’ll just burn Arkadia to the ground.”

“Isn’t that what you came here to do? Isn’t that what I have wanted for eighteen winters? Do we deserve to die?”

“It’s not about deserving,” Murphy said quietly, shaking his head in confusion. “You still want this place to burn, even knowing we need it to bring magic back to the kingdoms?”

Lexa didn’t answer that, lifting her massive tail and curling it around her, pushing Murphy carefully away.

“Look,” Murphy muttered, standing up to pace, “I’m not saying I want to kill Octavia, but I’m not powerful enough to restrain her. My magic’s not gonna cut it. If I don’t kill her, she and her little army of misfits will kill me first.”

Lexa still kept her eyes cast away and her expression steadily unrevealing, but her lip seemed to curl in disappointment. “You forget, Murchadh. You are capable of growing stronger, and you have an army of your own.”

“An ancient shapeshifter, to start?” Murphy proposed, only half-kidding.

“I would gladly die fighting by your side,” answered Lexa, ever serious and sincere.

She stood, manacles rattling as they scraped over the stone plinth. Her legs were healing; she’d stopped struggling since Bellamy’s rise to the throne. Her freedom was in sight, and Murphy had been so busy helping the prince that he’d forgotten all about his promise to free her. Still, she hadn’t doubted him.

Murphy gazed up at her, humbled again not only by her sheer size, but by the magnitude of her faith in him. 

“Guess I ought to go see a few druids about some pesky cold iron, then,” he whispered.

Lexa seemed to smile, ducking her huge head bashfully. “Let’s give you something to impress them with, first. An army is nothing without a powerful leader.”

Murphy balked, wariness pulling at his expression. “You want to train me?”

“When we met, I offered you a deal, did I not? That I would bring you to your power, and you would break these chains?” Lexa’s wings shifted, her huge back rippling with muscle. “Don’t seem so surprised. I do actually know a few spells myself.”

His mouth opened in a disbelieving smile. “Was that sarcasm, Lexa? Where is my dragon and what did you do to her?”

She snorted, sending Murphy stumbling back and blowing out the torch he’d left on the ground. They were then cast in darkness, save for the faint white glow of the cave’s silk ceiling.

“We’ll start small. Show me fire,” demanded Lexa. “And don’t hold back.”

Murphy hesitated, and then shrugged. No one else was here to see it. There were, for once, no consequences.

So he spread his legs and took a breath, holding his hands out at his sides. He thought of heat, and bright light, and fields razed to the ground.

Two great columns of fire shot from his palms, blasting up to the top of the cave like a searing amaranth bloom. Erratic shadows danced in the once-dark cavern and the flames hissed high overhead, furious, unending vipers of flame. He watched glaring reflections of the fire blaze in the deep, dark pupils of the dragon’s massive eyes.

“Release.”

The fire vanished. Smoke and sparks spilled from his hands, and Murphy’s chest heaved. Then he offered a cocky little grin, peering at Lexa’s proud face through the charred tendrils of glowworm silk hanging in his eyes, clinging inelegantly to his shoulders and his hair.

He hoped he still had eyebrows.

“Well, young warlock,” said Lexa. “That’s a start.”


	8. eight

Murphy always knew he was different.

When he cried as a baby, he fell trees. When he laughed, rainbows crept across the sky.

His parents were sorcerers too, and knew enough to hide him away. They were both talented, like Murphy, with elemental magic, but had their proclivities. His mother excelled in knitting wounds back together and lifting sicknesses from the body. He remembered her twining a flu up from his throat and out of his nose with the twirl of a finger, and the red tendril of magic tumbling apart into stars in her fist. 

Alex, his father, had a way with blessings and curses. He could look at any object or animal or person and right away see the gold and silver shimmers of something out of place. He could always find the knot of wood or the grain of iron or the pumping organ the spell was wrapped around, untie it with deft and careful fingers should it need undoing, and lift it away. He very well could have laid his own blessings upon loved ones, curses upon those who might have wished to harm them, but he really just preferred to put things as they should have been and leave them alone.

His parents were profoundly adept in setting things right, but they never could make Murphy normal again.

When he lost control, he’d beg his parents to search his body for dark tendrils of illness, silver-threaded curses. They looked, just to humor him, but never found anything that could be unwound from him.

_“Not a thing wrong with you, my darling,”_ his mother always said, wiping his rushing tears. _“This is how the world wanted you.”_

Alex, collector of tomes, gave Murphy a spell book when he was nine winters old. The spells could contain and direct his wild magic, give it aim and control, like arrows in the string of his mother’s bow.

But they soon found that Murphy could not be taught to read it, nor any other book. His father tried to read them aloud to Murphy and have him repeat them, wanted him to study and memorize the spells. Murphy didn’t like studying. Murphy didn’t want to memorize. 

Murphy quickly grew to hate spells, so he never learned any.

His parents taught him control the only other way they knew how; intent and imagination. Picture what you want to happen, how you want it to happen, and mean it.

He was thirteen winters old, coming home from an afternoon spent playing in the woods, when he felt in control for the very first time.

When the knights of the Kingdom of Light heard of the sorcerers’ cottage where little boys from the nearby village went to die— each of Murphy’s new friends suffering his curse; falling over ledges during tag, hanging themselves from climbing trees by their scarves, drowning in the swimming pond— they struck his father down in the yard before setting the cottage aflame with his mother inside.

And Murphy pictured choking them on their own smoke, burning them and their horses and the earth they walked on with their own fire, and meant it.

He razed the countryside to the ground until there was nothing left but the black skeletons of knights and stallions and the home he grew up in.

His father was gone when he reached him. His mother couldn’t speak, her lips and tongue and lungs all burned. He remembered standing over her, too afraid to touch, and wept as their house crumbled and smoldered around them.

The knights had driven the sword into his father’s chest and thrown the torches into the cottage windows, but it was Murphy who brought them there. It was Murphy who killed his parents.

He remembered the way his mother’s grey eyes held to his until the life left them, and Murphy always had the strangest sensation that she was looking at someone else. Someone who didn’t exist yet.

And Murphy meant it when he fell to his knees and cried out, his magic tearing free from him like the wild thing it was, clawing a jagged slash between this world and wherever his parents’ souls had gone. 

The near-blinding, emerald light of the veil to the spirit world shined in his wet eyes for hours, but Murphy never went in. He was scared, and his magic kept pulling him away, away, away.

He left it all behind, used his newfound semblance of control like a weapon as he ran with bandits like the girl with the glove and Mbege and everyone he’d lost in between. He knew it wasn’t fair to let his curse touch them, but he didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t know how. Murphy always had been a selfish bastard.

He thought it might have been one of the first selfless things he’d ever done in his life, finishing his basic training with the dragon and leaving to find the druids, to learn how to break Lexa’s chains, become powerful enough to defeat Octavia, and, well… save the world, he supposed.

He and Lexa spent weeks measuring his capabilities. He could release columns of fire but not weaken them once they’d built themselves up. He could summon rain or snow but not stop it. He could freeze time, but not for long. He could shoot lightning but not hit a target— a lesson which had resulted in a lot of unhappy silk and stalagmites, and a dragon whose scales looked vaguely ruffled. He could not resurrect any dead thing for very long, though they hadn’t a person to test it on. He could make things grow and make them die, but could not decide how the leaves and stems and flowers would look, or how they would interact with the world. 

He turned out to be rather talented with illusions; Murphy supposed it was because he had no problem telling lies, even if he didn’t usually bother. The only simple illusion he couldn’t quite master was invisibility, because for some reason his feet always still showed.

He could cast, locate, strengthen, weaken, and exorcise some minor blessings and curses, but that sort of careful, gentle work wasn’t really his forte. Honestly, it kind of pissed him off.

And he still sucked at healing magic.

But Lexa could only teach him so much with her own powers locked up, so they decided it would be best for Murphy to seek some outside help. He was shitting himself somewhat at the thought of asking the three terrifying druid chieftains to teach him how to disappear his feet, among other things. But they apparently lived to serve him, and that was the kind of offer one didn’t turn down over a bit of social anxiety.

He was lucky he’d learned how to materialize cattle into the cavern even from leagues upon leagues away. He’d have to remember to feed Lexa while he was gone.

He buzzed with anticipation as he kneeled at the foot of his bed and packed his bag, a small leather traveling pack with all the necessary straps and pockets and then some, which he’d afforded with his admittedly generous servant’s wages. Murphy finished stuffing into the bag his blanket, a change of clothes, his canteen, and a few snacks for the road (mostly cornbread muffins, he was nervous to go any further into the kitchens and had just guiltily groped the tray closest to the door), and looked around for anything else he might need to bring along, even though he figured his magic and the short ride to the druid camp made packing a more casual affair.

He frowned as his eyes fell on the potted plant in his windowsill. Early dawn casted a dandelion light over the calla lily’s delicate white petals.

Murphy expected to be gone for weeks, but didn’t want to bother Clarke with something as silly as caring for his flower, even if it was his only keepsake. He wasn’t sure he had enough control and precision to summon just enough water for the flower from the druid camp without flooding his chambers. He sighed as he stood, turned his back to the plant and shouldered his bag, and made for the door.

In the courtyard, the disgruntled stable boy he’d harassed awake from a haystack earlier was standing obediently by Murphy’s speckled white mare, who he’d deemed a good and loyal little riding horse after their awful trip out to hunt the hydra and all the dreadful field trips after that.

“Thanks, kid,” said Murphy as he took the mare’s reins, and the glowering stable boy perked up as Murphy flicked a gold coin into his palm. Murphy snorted as he ran off, cradling the coin to his chest and leaving a trail of hay in his wake.

Murphy tacked the horse up with ease, now, and was about to throw a leg over to mount it when he was grabbed by the arm.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Murphy jerked his arm away from the prince, who clearly suffered from a dangerous lack of respect for boundaries and personal space, but glanced over his shoulder to look at him nonetheless.

The prince regent was standing in the courtyard of his kingdom in nothing but his breeches, which were barely hanging on as it was.

His feet and chest were bare and his black hair was disheveled, and his breath, though just barely, was coming a bit faster than normal.

They’d been estranged from each other for weeks after their fight in the dead field; Murphy tired from late nights of training and still bristling with anger, Bellamy uncomfortable and completely incapable of apologizing. They spoke tersely and kept far apart.

Despite all this, Murphy’s face split into a grin at the sight of him. “My, my. Prince Bellamy, did you just run after me?”

Bellamy wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms over his chest. “No. You were making a racket in your room, and now I find you stealing from the royal stables. Clearly my suspicion was warranted.”

“What are you gonna do, sire?” asked Murphy, mounting the horse and looking down on Bellamy with a goading smile. “Arrest me?”

Bellamy, of course, was not going to arrest him, and stared helplessly up at Murphy.

“Where are you going?”

Murphy shook his head in thorough amusement, gripping his reins. “To see a friend.”

“You—” Bellamy croaked, tightening his arms around himself. “You’ll come back. To see to your responsibilities here.” He flicked his stare up, looking suddenly insecure. “Won’t you?”

Sometimes Murphy forgot; for all his power and popularity, Bellamy didn’t have very many friends.

Murphy rolled his eyes. “Yes. Will you need a favor by which to remember me? Shall I leave you my handkerchief, my lord?”

Bellamy huffed, uncrossing his arms. Murphy could see the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “You’re insufferable.”

Murphy grinned back, eyes roaming over the embarrassed blush on the ridges of the prince’s cheeks and the curves of his ears, blooming like a rose in the center of his freckled chest. His skin was prickling with gooseflesh in the cold of the morning, and his toes were curled against the courtyard’s cobblestone. Murphy couldn’t quite believe the prince of Arkadia had chased after him in nothing but his pants.

“You love it,” he replied, and for once, Bellamy didn’t argue.

Murphy figured it was now or never and at last took up the reins and trotted off, ambling toward the main gates and the western woods under a mild morning sun. When he looked back once over his shoulder, Prince Bellamy was, like always, watching him go.

Murphy was beginning to wonder whether the back of his head was shaped funny. He was positive he’d been dropped once or twice as an infant, if his journeying to become a powerful wizard, free an ancient dragon, and achieve world peace with nothing but a backpack full of cornbread muffins was any indication.

☆☆☆

When Murphy pressed his palm to the rock face, willing the illusion to fall, the crawling ivy twitched toward his hands, and creeping green ringlets encircled his fingers. Murphy smiled at the first of many warm welcomes.

☆☆☆

He woke on the sixteenth day to more twinkling wood.

Murphy stretched leisurely, rolling over in the cot and facing the afternoon sunlight filtering in through the hemp canvas of the tent. He always got to sleep in late, here. No one dared wake him. Not even Indra, who didn’t care about his feelings at all.

He was reminded of this fact by the ache in his arms and the strain on his eyes. Indra’d kept him up all night drilling; forge a blade, curse it, charm it, fire it at an unassuming straw dummy. They switched between blades of ice and stone, curses of poison and fire, lightening and targeting charms until Murphy wasn’t cracking jokes anymore, fiercely focused and sweating all over. But it could’ve been worse than Indra, who just pushed him to his limits.

Anya was crazy, and he had what he was sure were many near-deaths under their guidance, as they urged him to try things like throwing himself off of cliffs and levitating himself before he hit the ground. They always jumped with him to prove they weren’t trying to kill him, breaking into rare smiles as they hovered breathlessly over the rocks or sank to the bottom of the sea together. Murphy still didn’t like it.

Luna was nice. She mostly lectured him about mindfulness as she oversaw his feeding of the pixies, which consisted of Murphy carefully picking through their garden of tree stumps and wildflowers, painstakingly materializing tiny thimbles of nectar and having his hair pulled. Patience, said Luna, and peace. The strength and stamina he learned with Indra and the skills and stunts he learned with Anya were useless without patience, and inner peace.

Murphy could still see pixie bites on his wrists. Apparently being _Murchadh_ meant nothing to them, or at least Murphy had thought so until Luna assured him that was just their shitty little way of getting his attention. 

Everything loved him, here. And Murphy loved them back.

He dressed, and grinned as he emerged from his tent into the busy druid camp, the outside of his temporary home littered with more gifts of wooden wind chimes every day, the instruments hanging in clusters from tree branches stabbed into the ground. Apparently the otherwise quiet druids loved music and noise, and thought Murphy ought to like it too. He supposed he always had.

Figuring he’d go about his morning washing-up routine after getting some breakfast— or at this point, lunch— Murphy shuffled to the tables outside of the cookhouse, laden with bowls and baskets of fruits, vegetables, roots, nuts, and bread. He’d been dreaming of bacon for a while now, but didn’t dare tell anyone.

Murphy fixed himself a bowl and made for the nearest fire pit log, still attached to arbitrary ideas of seating, whereas most of the druids just sprawled out wherever the grass looked softest, untroubled by its dribbling with morning dew.

He ate quietly and leisurely with sleep still in his eyes, watching Lincoln lead a gaggle of children in an awful, bellowing song of blown shells, horns, and flutes.

Despite the constant racket, Murphy wasn’t used to anyone in camp speaking aloud. They all preferred to communicate telepathically, because who besides Murphy wouldn’t, if they could?

It was for this reason that he nearly leapt out of his skin as someone approached from behind and said, “Never a moment’s peace in these camps, am I right?”

The stranger laughed pleasantly as he startled and fumbled his bowl, a wave of raspberries flying over the side and tumbling into the grass before he could clamp it down on his knees.

“Let me help you with that,” they said good-naturedly, and Murphy had intended to grumble and swear for as long as it took them to pluck the berries from the grass, but fell silent as the stranger reached out to help with one small, tan hand, and one bulky glove.

Murphy stared up at her as her familiar smile grew and grew.

“Emori?”

Then they were in each other’s arms, holding tight enough to try and make up for what was nearing four winters of going without.

“I thought you were dead,” Murphy croaked, gathering a handful of the bandit’s gritty, chestnut hair, interspersed with little braids, just like it used to be. She didn’t wear her headscarf anymore.

Emori pulled back to press her hands to his cheeks, delightedly searching his eyes. “I told you, didn’t I? Not even your silly curse could take me.”

“All this time, I…” Murphy whispered, trailing off. 

The bandit and her brother had taken him in a dozen moons after Murphy went out on his own, and they ran cons and robberies together for a great few winters, during which Murphy finally felt alive again. Then they were finally, inevitably tracked down by knights of the Kingdom of Light. Murphy escaped, but the siblings didn’t. He was always so sure they’d been killed. That was just what happened to people he failed to stop loving.

But here she was, her brilliant head decidedly still on.

“What happened to you?” breathed Murphy, awestruck by the first survivor of him. Of course it was her.

“We broke out of our cells while we were waiting for our execution, but we got separated. I went looking for Otan… I’ve been looking for him all this time.” Emori’s expression suddenly shuttered with guilt, and her hands slid to his shoulders. “I wanted to go after you. I did. But I couldn’t search for you both, and Otan…”

Murphy had always been the jealous sort, but family he understood.

He shook his head and gently touched her hand. “He’s your brother. I get it.”

Emori blinked back her tears and squeezed him again before finally releasing him from her clutches, brushing off his ensemble of a grass-stained tunic and a wild pair of striped, multicolor breeches that one of the locals had gifted him. His toes wiggled bare in the grass. She looked him up and down with a raised brow.

“A better question,” said Emori, “Is what happened to _you?”_

_“_ You haven’t heard?” replied Murphy. Then he lifted his arms, and was immediately descended upon by blushing pixies, groping grass, and the tiny whirlwind of a delighted noon breeze. “Turns out, I’m the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth.”

***

Emori, like she always did, made a very good point.

He told her all about the prophecy, about Octavia. How he was trying to get stronger, smarter, faster. How he needed to take her down and soon.

Emori lifted her brow, as she was also wont to do, and pointed out that Murphy was training to fight but relying entirely on his magic. _The gods packed all that power into a human body for a reason,_ she said. _Use it._

Her eyebrow only rose up again when he claimed he didn’t know anyone who could teach him hand-to-hand combat.

So that was how he found himself in a grassy clearing holding a big stick like he had any clue what to do with it, Emori circling him and twirling a staff of her own with a smile that wracked his nerves.

He studied his surroundings and decided he ought to let his skull bash against the moss that was creeping up the trunks of weeping beeches, and that was all he had time to think.

He dove from the end of her staff as Emori lunged at him, somehow snarling and smiling at once. She made several more wide swipes, and Murphy narrowly danced out of the way of all of them.

The bandit laughed and cracked her neck, spinning her staff. “Fancy feet.”

“I try,” Murphy replied, ducking beneath another unforgiving swing of her stick that might have shorn off his hair if he’d been any slower.

They carried on much the same. He wove away from downward slices and bent back from upward arcs, blocked her ferocious jabs so that their staffs vibrated in hand, making his teeth rattle.

He didn’t know how long they went on like that, but he swore the sun had, at some point, scooted south to see better.

Murphy dodged a last, frustrated flurry of whacks before Emori drew herself up and demanded, panting, “Go on the offense. Don’t just run.”

“Why? Getting tired?” Murphy teased, using his staff to whack the soil from the soles of his bare feet.

“Outlasting your opponent,” Emori realized, and laughed breathlessly. “I think we can work with that.”

Murphy really just didn’t want to take a swing at his friend, but he certainly wasn’t going to stop Emori from thinking he was a tactician.

Wasting no time, she dove for him again, though saved her swings and swipes for when she was sure she could make contact, preserving more energy. He got in a few decent jabs himself between jagged juking and exaggerated dodging, enjoying the familiar thrill of making the bandit laugh.

As they sparred, she pointed out windows where he could have hit her but didn’t, good maneuvers he’d executed entirely on accident, and all the best places to stab and grab and punch and pull. Hours might have passed for all Murphy was dragging in heavy breaths and Emori was sweating, but it surely had only been minutes.

He hadn’t had so much fun in a long time.

Emori put space between them to wipe beads of sweat from her temples and forehead with the back of her gloved hand, her sun-kissed skin glittering in the little light weaving through rustling treetops. Murphy was leaning on his stick, watching, until Emori opened her eyes and watched him back, her expression creasing with mirth.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “You actually grew up handsome.”

“Ah, ever the master of backhanded compliments, ‘Mori.”

“No, really. I thought that nose was going to haunt you forever. It’s actually a bit regal now.”

“Better be,” said Murphy, turning up his regal nose. “I _am_ part of the royal household of Arkadia, after all.”

Murphy hadn’t considered it very interesting news in the face of his being, well, _Murchadh,_ but Emori’s jaw dropped. She flung her staff to the ground and marched forward to shove him in the chest, grinning in disbelief. “Only you.”

He smiled down at her as she came in close, her hand curling in his tunic to keep him there. Her eyes were still like sparking firewood, and the faintest smattering of freckles unearthed by the sun fell beneath them. This close, it almost reminded him of…

“Holy crap. Look,” she hissed, and Murphy blinked out of his haze to follow her stare.

Through thick trees he could see a glimpse of white hair with a strange sort of sparkle dancing over it, and a flicking tail like glowworm silk. The creature took another step over crunching leaves to reveal its more defining assets: a huge, angular head and a coiling, tapered horn. It looked briefly toward the pair with big, bored eyes before lowering its snout to graze on shady grass.

Murphy jumped as another voice entered the fray. “I need to borrow Murchadh. Today we’re going to try burying ourselves alive and entering a state of suspended animation. Oh, look at that,” said Anya, hands clasped in front of them and looking to possess about the same level of calm disinterest as the beast. “Unicorns only reveal themselves to those of great destinies. And virgins. I bet it really likes you.”

Murphy flushed, and Emori laughed so hard she bent double and had to be half-carried back to camp.

He was really going to enjoy burying Anya.

☆☆☆

Murphy trained with Emori and the chieftains for fourteen more days. He learned that, with patience, control, and as much inner peace as he could muster, that he could accomplish anything from communing with fish to triggering earthquakes.

Some of the darker magic went unpracticed as the druids were— in all ways besides humiliating him in public and killing pesky knights— a peaceful people. Anya still took it upon themself to walk him through all the… theoretical. Animating corpses, popping out eyeballs, bringing about a series of deeply metaphorical plagues, et cetera.

Ultimately, and if there had been any doubt still in his mind, Murphy was decidedly abnormal and unfixable. Rather than run from it, he had to accept it. Murphy was capable of the strange, the powerful, the kind, and the impossible. Murphy was… Oh, it made him gag. But Murphy was special.

At sunset on the thirtieth day, the chieftains had him kneel before a tree stump. In the center of the old stump’s rings, Luna placed a single iron nail.

He opened one eye to peek at it, and then both, a frown overtaking his eager smile.

“This is a nail.”

“Keen observational skills as always,” replied Indra.

Murphy slouched on his knees. “I just… kinda thought today was the day.”

The chieftains still stood in a row before him, looking down on him expectantly.

“Get rid of the nail,” said Luna.

Murphy sighed. He’d already proven the many ways he could destroy things. “Like, blow it up?”

“Get rid of it. Every bit of it. As if it never existed.”

“Jeez.” Murphy glanced down at the unassuming nail, raising a brow. “What did you say to them?” he asked the nail. The nail did not reply.

He sighed again and shifted his knees and shoulders, closing his eyes, and breathed out deeply through his nose. With intent, imagination, patience, and inner peace, he sought to blow it up.

Silence returned, and Murphy peeked an eye open. The nail still sat on the stump.

He knitted his brows, closed his eyes, and tried melting it. There was no bubbling of volcanic metal, nor the hissing of steam.

He was Murchadh. He could destroy a stupid little nail.

He squeezed his eyes tighter, and though it wasn’t quite what Luna asked, willed the nail to crunch and crumble. When he opened his eyes the nail still sat on the stump, looking for all a nail could look smug, pleased as pie.

Murphy glared at it until a late evening breeze ghosted by, raising goosebumps on his arms and lifting the hairs of the back of his neck. He widened his eyes, slumping again onto his heels as he stared up at the chieftains.

“It’s cold iron.”

Indra huffed a laugh, stretching the scars by her eyes and chin. “Like I said; exceptionally keen, when you stop trying to blow things up.”

Murphy nodded at the nail and the chieftains both. “I can do this.”

“I would hope so,” said Anya, looking out over his head. “Or else this will be embarrassing for all of us.”

Murphy hesitantly glanced over his shoulder, and found every druid in the camp had stopped to stare. Murchadh versus a single iron nail. Truly a battle for the history books.

He looked one last time at the chieftains. Indra’s hard face was expectant. Not worried or hopeful, but as if she already knew the outcome and was waiting for him to finish so she could go and get dinner. Luna’s eyes glimmered with pride, though he hadn’t done anything yet save for straining like he was casting a crapping-his-prophetic-breeches spell. And Anya— Anya’s eyes burned with an unusual, fierce faith.

With the deepest breath he’d likely ever taken, Murphy closed his eyes and thought of the nail, and thought of its every dark grain of metal, its gritty orange rust, and thought of the old, ringed tree stump it sat upon. He wished that whatever god had forged the nail changed their mind. He willed that the iron nail would cease to be.

He opened his eyes. The tree stump’s rings encircled nothing at all.

The chieftains stared at the stump.

“You were completing a task here,” said Anya.

“Yes,” Murphy answered.

“You were asked to banish something.”

“Yes.”

“And you did.”

Murphy looked back down at the empty stump. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

The chieftains were quiet for a moment, and Luna squatted to reach out and press her fingertips to the tree stump in amazement. “What would we have you banish,” she whispered, “besides cold iron?” She looked up at him. “Was it cold iron?”

And as Murphy realized he had not just disappeared the nail, but erased it from reality altogether, and that nobody but him even knew what the hell they were doing all standing around a tree stump, laughter bubbled up in him with the happy sort of madness of anyone who had broken every last rule and gotten away with it.

Cold iron could not be affected by heat nor magic, so Murphy had gone and affected reality itself.

He grinned, meeting Luna’s hopeful eyes. “Fuck yeah it was.”

And the chieftains all split into knowing smiles, and Lincoln blew his loud fucking horn, and the weirdly supportive druids channeled their uproar into throwing together a party that would have put the drunkest drunkards of any of the kingdoms to shame.

While Murphy kneeled in disbelief by the old tree stump, the only other one in all the world who might have remembered that smug iron nail, bonfires sprang to life all over the camp, and the druids painted the darkening sky with fire and light, and lively music rattled out of the many instruments laying about, all charmed into rare obedience.

They feasted and drank like kings, _better_ than kings, with no desecrated birds or boar in sight. They sang, and dance, and offered Murphy things just so he could make them disappear, even if they didn’t even remember what they’d given him afterward.

Murphy’s last night in the druid camp was one to remember. Though, after the wine and the blinking fireflies made him sleepy enough to decide it was time to bid the chieftains goodbye and stumble toward his tent, he doubted he would remember it.

He grinned as he trailed his hand past a thousand dangling wind chimes jutting up from the ground and ducked into his tent, and made slow, careful work of unlacing his tunic in the dark. Just enough moon and firelight filtered through the woven canvas for him to see his own fingers, and to recognize the intruder.

Emori said nothing as she pressed him against one of the wooden tent poles and pushed her bare hand past his, undoing his laces even slower. Her amber gaze flickered up to meet his in time with every slow, glowing breath of the firefly that had followed her inside.

He swallowed as she undid his laces entirely and brushed her finger down his throat and sternum, curling her fist just beside his beating heart.

“You really did grow up handsome,” she whispered.

Murphy inhaled sharply. “You too.”

Emori laughed, no less brilliantly and unapologetically in the careful quiet, and slid her hand down his stomach, tender and a little bit mournful, now.

“You don’t want to kiss me.”

“I do,” said Murphy.

Emori smiled and shook her head, closing her eyes and leaning into his touch as Murphy reached up with a trembling hand, and tucked a few fallen strands of hair behind her ear.

“You’re waiting for someone, and it’s not me.”

“I love you. Since we were kids,” insisted Murphy, tilting his lips towards Emori’s. She stopped him with not one, not two, but three fingers between their mouths.

Murphy frowned as she drew her hand away from their lips and cupped his cheek. “You always were too eager to please.” Her eyes were soft. She seemed disappointed, but still just as fond. She tugged his ear. “Seriously, work on your self-advocacy. That unicorn was coming on really strong.”

His resulting laughter was suspiciously teary for whatever reason, and Emori coddled him a moment longer, shaking her head at his wet eyes.

“Come with me,” pleaded Murphy, catching her hands. “Come with me to Arkadia.”

Emori only gave a wistful smile, gathering their hands to her chest. “Remember when we cursed fate, and said we’d go wherever the woods led us?” she asked. “I think those were the same things. I think I have to find my brother, and I think you have to fulfill your little prophecy. And once we’re done, then maybe we can meet again.”

Murphy slumped, offering an unsteady smile as she let him go. “My little prophecy, huh?”

“Yes,” said Emori, punctuating it with a kiss of his cheek. “Your little, itty bitty prophecy.”

☆☆☆

On the thirty-first day, Murphy returned to Arkadia in the middle of the night. The stable boy balked at his strange breeches and his berry-painted horse, but snapped his mouth shut as Murphy flicked him two gold coins.

He was dead on his feet after the day’s ride, and hoped that after nearly nineteen winters Lexa could wait one more night.

Murphy sincerely intended to go right to his quarters and break his nose flopping face-first onto his bed, but stopped in the hall as he noticed candlelight spilling from beneath the prince’s door.

He sighed, and pushed the door open without bothering to knock.

Before he’d even located him in the room Bellamy stood abruptly at his desk, slamming his knees against its underside. Together they watched the ink pot roll to the desk’s edge and shatter on the floor.

Murphy glanced, unimpressed, up at Bellamy. The prince’s eyes were wide, and his arms dangled uselessly at his sides.

“Hi.”

Murphy stared and shook his head, dropping his traveling pack on the long dinner table.

“It’s my fault for depriving you of any social interaction for so many weeks,” he sighed, fetching a rag and tray from the table that was collecting a comical amount of dirty dishes, and crossed the room to kneel by the desk and sweep glass shards onto the tray. Bellamy stared at him unhelpfully.

“You were gone a long time. I…” He swallowed, and scratched uncomfortably at his arm. “I thought something might have happened.”

“Like I found a new prince to clean up after?” Murphy straightened up momentarily and pressed a hand to his heart. “I would never. You’re the only tyrant for me.”

Bellamy went rosy red and laughed, but it was an unsure sound. Murphy slowed in his collection of the glass, and met his dark eyes as the prince kneeled on the other side of the ink spill, thoughtlessly taking glass into his palms.

Murphy silently charmed the shards’ edges dull, but kept up the illusion that they were sharp. Bellamy must have known he was being stupid, but he seemed… nervous. Then Murphy wondered if it was counterproductive to not let the prince learn life lessons, but decided they could deal with ‘glass is sharp’ after ‘dishes go back to the kitchen.’

“Did you have, um… fun?” the prince asked, sounding like he’d never used the word before.

Murphy thought to crack a joke, jibe about having no fun at all because he was too busy wishing he were polishing Bellamy’s boots. But the prince was being painfully earnest, and Murphy didn’t think he could stand to break anything more here than the inkwell.

“Yeah,” he said sincerely, smiling at blurry memories of the night before. “Made some new friends, picked up some new… hobbies. It was good to see Emori again.”

“Emori?” Bellamy said, looking up suddenly, and swore as he dropped a shard of glass that busted into about a hundred more pieces. “Is that your—“

“We used to rob people together.” Murphy raised a brow. “You jealous, sire?”

Bellamy shook his head, digging around uselessly in the ink spill for minuscule bits of glass. It actually hurt to watch.

“I knew you had a criminal background,” he muttered, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Who said I stopped?” replied Murphy, his mouth flicking up into devilish grin. Bellamy, defender of law and order in the land, just shook his head. No one could ever accuse Murphy of lying.

They cleaned in silence, Murphy against firelight and Bellamy against moonlight, a few moments longer. Then, “You must be tired. Get some sleep,” said Bellamy, nodding towards Murphy’s room. “I’ll take care of this.”

Murphy feared what Prince Bellamy, newly-succumbed crockery addict, considered ‘taking care’ of a mess, but for the moment his exhaustion outweighed his worry.

He rested the tray of glass on the stone floor, leaving it to flicker with a hundred tiny pictures of the blazing fireplace. Looking over Bellamy’s inky hands one last time, he rose and retrieved his pack from the dinner table.

He made for the door connecting their chambers, and stilled with his hand against the wood. When he looked back over his shoulder, Bellamy had, of course, already abandoned the glass, and something warmed in a regrettably but increasingly fond Murphy.

He cleared his throat before he spoke, and said, “I wouldn’t just leave, you know. You’re not just my boss. You’re my friend.”

The prince stared, helplessly holding his stained hands out in front of him. “Murphy, I…” He cleared his throat, brushing off his hands and succeeding only in smearing the ink around. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Murphy didn’t think his pride could stand smiling as much as he wanted to, and frankly wasn’t sure why his face was trying to do such a thing at all. He nodded in a way that he hoped looked casual but decisive and slipped into the antechamber, shutting the door on Bellamy’s warm eyes and his stupid hands.

His room was chilly and dark, and Murphy lit a couple of the candles scattered around with a snap of his fingers as he threw his pack down.

He was halfway to flinging himself on the old bed when a dot of white caught his eye. His flower in the windowsill was miraculously still alive, and waiting patiently beneath the moonlight.

Coming closer, he found the calla lily’s petals were still soft and shapely and its stem was standing tall, even after thirty-one days. Murphy touched the soil, and it was still damp from being watered. As realization struck, his magic leapt with affection and another trumpet bloom spontaneously sprouted from the lily’s stem.

Murphy folded his arms on the wood slab and dropped his head.

He was going to die for that royal jackass, wasn’t he?


	9. nine

In a cave in the belly of the Earth, a two-hundred-winter-old dragon had spent eighteen of those winters lying in the dark of it, listening to water dripping from stalagmites, waiting.

If Murphy had his way, today would be the last.

When he told her so, Lexa’s moon eyes widened impossibly, shining. Murphy was not a giggling sort of man, but the dragon’s elation made him feel equally as giddy.

She suddenly turned her big head around, peering around the damp cavern. “We should perform a ceremony.”

Murphy’s smile turned incredulous. “A ceremony.”

“This place has been my home for all your life. It is a symbol of the return of magic. A symbol of my freedom. I can’t just… leave.”

“This place is a symbol for smelling like shit,” said Murphy, taking a step closer and staring up into her huge eyes. “Let’s get you out of those chains, Lex.”

She took a big breath in through her snout, her pitch scales gleaming as her chest swelled and settled again. He saw her ears for the first time, flicking out from behind the thick needles of her many horns. It was unfairly endearing— a nervous dragon.

Then, with the slowness of any giant’s most hesitant movements, she inclined her head in acquiescence. Rock fragments tumbled from the cavern’s high ceiling as she settled heavily onto her haunches and finally, lowered her black belly to the plinth.

Murphy smiled encouragingly as she opened her eyes again and stretched her neck across the chasm, and he came to kneel and hold her huge snout between his hands.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Whatever it takes,” said Lexa, her rumbling voice sending vibrations through him.

“It’s actually a bit anticlimactic. Want me to summon some celebratory horns? I’d hate to deprive you of your big moment.”

“You have done more for me than I could ever ask,” replied Lexa, earnest. Always, always earnest. With that she closed her eyes and Murphy closed his, pressing his forehead to her snout.

He thought of rusting chains and cold iron manacles, eroding the stone plinth with the dragon’s every twitch and desperate pull. He thought of black scales cracked and dark skin raw, and willed them plain, unhidden, free of shadows and breathing again. He thought of the white glowworm silk on the cavern ceiling waving like a woman’s hair, and wondered who Lexa was.

When he opened his eyes, green moons were watching him, creased with joy. Lexa’s tail, its end like a thousand steel swords, swished happily, and there was no scuff of chains or clanging metal against rock. The manacles were gone.

Lexa must have been rooting around in his mind again, because she did not seem confused, did not need to be convinced that she had been clamped in cold iron for decades despite the fact that, as of now, her manacles never existed. He thought it might have taken anyone else a while to come to terms with, wondering why they were still in this cave, unshifted, after all that time. But Lexa was Lexa, strange and faithful and, if Murphy really had to admit it, wise.

“Should I get back?” Murphy whispered, and Lexa smiled with every last fang.

He scrambled backward over rock and hunched in the dark stairwell, throwing up a glimmering blue shield as Lexa rose up.

He didn’t have to imagine what eighteen winters of pent-up magic looked like, as the cavern exploded into blinding light.

The dragon had turned into a white supernova. Fire caught along the edges of the plinth and the stalagmites dripped with spreading vines. The glowworm silk shot down in millions of glittering curtains for however many miles deep the cavern’s chasm went, concealing everything around the expanding sun in the center of it all. The cave echoed deafeningly with the sounds of songs and voices and violence that Murphy had never heard. Visions of dragons flew around the cave in every color and size. A mirage of slim, silver dragon shot past him so quickly Murphy stumbled back, and the silver dragon laughed as it zipped back into the eye of the blast.

For a moment, as thick grass and trees bloomed all around and were thereupon overtaken by the surging light, Murphy worried Lexa had gone up in her own burst of magic and left it to swallow the world whole. Then, as suddenly as a cold iron nail, it blinked out entirely.

Murphy hesitantly let his shield fall, stepping down onto the vibrant grass that was encroaching up the stairs and the cavern walls too. The plinth was shielded entirely by long-hanging threads of sparkling glowworm silk, emanating soft light. The curly tendrils of very friendly vines caressed Murphy’s shoulders and wrists and ankles, pulling him forward.

A little path of stepping stones was already floating over the chasm, though all but the first two stones were concealed by white silk. Murphy stared warily at the path. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be floating over the chasm on someone else’s magic.

As if reading his thoughts, vines wrapped securely around his wrists, tethering him to the ceiling’s jutting stalagmites. The invasion of his mind reminded him exactly whose magic he was meant to be trusting.

He crossed the chasm in nine unwavering steps. Lexa’s stones floated even more solidly than Murphy’s, which liked to bounce playfully underfoot and split off in opposite directions, making him fear for his groin every time he ever crossed the gap.

It was silent, save for the rustling of silk as Murphy gently pushed his way through. When he reached the center of the dragon’s plinth, he held his breath, and nudged the last of the threads apart.

The great dragon wasn’t a dragon anymore.

“Hello, Murchadh,” said Lexa, and not a single rock fell.

She was beautiful. Her pale green eyes were just as round as they had been when they were as big as ponds, and she spoke softly from full lips. Long, slightly matted hair fell over her shoulders, breasts, and back, and its hue reminded Murphy of autumn sun melting down the ridges of tree bark.

Lexa was gaunt and thin, her skin clinging to her scarred ankles, wrists, and ribs. Looking at her human form, it was not so easily concealed and not so easily stomached that she’d been chained down here in the cold and the dark for eighteen winters. She was only a girl.

The girl shivered, and Murphy snapped out of it, saving his rage for whatever day he’d been saving it all for. He conjured up simple clothes, a forest green tunic and brown breeches, and floated them over, turning his back to her.

Lexa dressed quietly and slowly. When she finished she said, “I look like a tree.”

Murphy found he was more scared of her now than he had been when one of her teeth was as tall as he was, and meekly replied, “Sorry.”

Lexa pressed a small hand between his shoulder blades. “I love it.”

Murphy turned and grabbed her hand, and a smile spread across his face. “What do you say we get out of here?”

“Yes,” breathed Lexa, before straightening up. “One thing, before we go. If I may.”

Murphy smirked crookedly again, ever amused by her politeness. “You may,” he agreed, and then he had an armful of dragon-girl who stank like eighteen winters of wet cave, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her, and held her close instead.

☆☆☆

Lexa stood in front of the strange column. “Why is this here?”

Murphy looked up from stoking the fire. “I don’t know, Lex. Place came like that. Beggars can’t be choosers. You should lie down.”

Lexa ignored him, running her fingers along the smooth wooden countertop of the kitchenette, gazing longingly out of the little window, and sniffing his lily in the sill.

“Is it possible we could go outside?”  


Murphy put the fire poker away and brushed the ash from his hands. He could have done it with magic, seeing as he was tending to a shapeshifter and not the prince, but he supposed old habits died hard.

“Tonight,” said Murphy, turning back the bedclothes. “You need to eat and drink something, and then I’ll take you to the druids tonight.”

“Under the cover of darkness,” said Lexa seriously, nodding once. Murphy rolled his eyes as she begrudgingly peeled herself away from the window and sat on his bed, tucking her feet under the covers and looking pitifully bored.

“I know; mean old Murphy keeping you inside,” he muttered, fluffing the pillow one last time before he crossed to the door. “I’ll be back with food.” He opened the door and paused, looking back over his shoulder suspiciously as Lexa sat obediently on the bed. “Stay.”

For a brief moment, Lexa looked like she might breathe fire. Murphy quickly vanished.

He just wanted to make it to the kitchens without running into any problems, or any people. Murphy thought he had, swiftly collecting a tray of fine food under the guise of bringing the prince his lunch and striding long and fast back to the antechamber. Unfortunately, most accidents happened closest to home.

_“MURPHY!”_

He jumped, violently rattling the tray. Twin bowls of soup teetered precariously, only coming to rest once the blond apprentice had appeared in front of him, gripping the cross-strap of her medicine bag.

“Well hello, stranger. Don’t know if you know but my name’s Clarke. It’s so wonderful to meet you,” she quipped, sticking out a hand for the shaking.

“Clarke,” greeted Murphy dryly. “It’s good to see you.”

Clarke opened her mouth, smiling and looking as if she planned to say something else teasing, when she suddenly softened, becoming genuine. “You too, Murphy. I suppose I shouldn’t ask where you’ve been.”

He sighed, trying not to look past her shoulder at his antechamber door down the hall. He really did miss her, but now just wasn’t a good time. It never was, these days. 

Murphy wanted to let her in, to tell her everything even more than he wanted to tell Bellamy. He figured he shouldn’t start by introducing her to the dragon he was illegally harboring in his chambers.

So, naturally, that was exactly what happened.

Trying not to look too put out, she peered at his tray. “What’cha got there?”

Murphy stared down at the loaf of bread and the suspicious bowls. “…Soup.”

Clarke nodded, pursing her lips as she stared at the bread and bowls as well. “Two soups,” she observed.

“The prince regent is very hungry. Which is why it’s imperative I get to his chambers very quickly, before he goes into a rage. It’s grotesque.”

“Ah, yes. Those snack time killing sprees Prince Bellamy is so infamous for. I shudder to think if you forgot his milky-wilky.”

Murphy leveled her with an unamused look. Clarke smiled.

“Fine. One of them is for me,” Murphy confessed, falling back on his old faithful tactic of lying by omission. “A growing boy’s gotta eat.”

To Murphy’s confusion, Clarke took a deep breath and nodded knowingly, licked her thumb, and reached out to smooth down some of his unruly hairs. “It’ll go fine. You’re a little rugged but some people find that charming. I see why a prince might be attracted to that. Of course there’s no need to fall back on personality; you’re perfectly cute. And a simple, private meal will be appreciated as well, I’m sure. No need to be nervous.”

Clarke looked half a second from slapping him on the ass and saying fare thee well. Murphy shook his head to stop her talking.

“What the hell are you on about?”

Clarke stilled with her spit-slicked thumb in the air. “The prince is courting you.”

“No!” shouted Murphy, unexpectedly shrill.

“No?”

_“No!_ I’m— it’s—“ Murphy floundered, sputtering, and finally blurted, “Soup for dragon!”

“Soup for… dragon? Gods, you’re blushing. Forgive me for making such an outlandish assumption,” said Clarke, rolling her eyes. “Who’s the dragon?”

Murphy switched his eyes away. “It’s not— That’s just her nickname. My friend who’s visiting. She has… huge teeth. Like a dragon. Would have. When they existed. Ha-ha. So funny.”

“Ow, Murphy, stop, I can’t breathe,” Clarke deadpanned. “When can I meet your massively-toothed friend?”

“N…” Murphy began hesitantly, drawing the sound out, intending to say ‘never.’

Clarke moved her mouth along with him, nodding slowly as she said, “N….ow. I will meet your friend now.”

Murphy knew a lost battle when he saw one, and sighed in defeat as he made the final few strides to his chambers.

“Lexa,” he said quietly to the door, grateful the neighboring prince was always trapped in court. “It’s me. And we have company.”

He waited a moment, and then slowly creaked the door open, peering inside. Clarke was draped along his back, trying to wedge her head between his and the doorframe like an overeager dog.

Lexa was still sitting on the bed, her posture perfect and expression serious, with her hands clasped in her lap. “Enter,” she said imperiously, and Murphy sighed, allowing Clarke to tumble through.

He had expected Clarke to greet Lexa with her usual curiosity and radiance, but Clarke seemed to circle her, silently studying the shapeshifter. Murphy breached her wide arc of the bed to place the tray in Lexa’s lap and break the bread. When he retreated to sit at the base of his unnecessary column with his own meal, he took pause at Lexa’s expression.

Clarke was suspicious, but Lexa looked mystified.

Not a word was spoken until Clarke decided it, stopping her pacing to gently smile, arriving at the conclusion that Lexa was alright. Murphy had once thought her intuition worked a lot like magic, but in time he realized Clarke was not a witchy woman, but a deeply distrusting one.

After all, she still didn’t know what the two of them were hiding.

“I’m Clarke. Nice to meet you,” greeted Clarke, giving a little wave.

Lexa blushed furiously as if Clarke had taken off all of her clothes and proclaimed her undying love, and Murphy slumped down against the column. _Please don’t let this cause problems,_ he thought.

“Truly wonderful to make your acquaintance, Clarke,” Lexa replied at length. Murphy raised a brow and shook his head, and Lexa glanced nervously at him.

But Clarke just smiled and tucked a bit of blonde hair behind her ear as she sat on the end of the bed, making Lexa scoot away until she was plastered against the headboard, cradling her bowl to her chest.

“How did you meet Murphy?” Clarke asked conversationally.

“He came to me in a vision,” answered Lexa. Murphy made a frantic slicing gesture across his neck. Lexa looked confused, and Murphy mimed laughter. “That was a joke,” Lexa amended, looking back to Clarke.

A smile grew on Clarke’s face. “Funny,” she said magnanimously. Murphy glowered. Unbelievable.

“Are the two of you close?” asked Clarke, tilting her head toward Murphy, though it was clear she only wanted to hear from her new favorite person on Earth, who wasn’t even actually a _person!_

Then he forgot why he was irritated at all, as Lexa surprised Murphy with a soft, genuine smile. “He saved my life.”

☆☆☆

Guiding Lexa through a human conversation long enough to sate Clarke’s interest must have been the mental and emotional equivalent of drilling with Prince Bellamy. By the time the apprentice heeded his begging and left, thoroughly charmed by Lexa’s weirdness and mouthing admonishments about Murphy calling her perfectly normal teeth gigantic, he was exhausted.

Then, once Lexa was done waxing poetic about Clarke, she all but passed out in Murphy’s bed, disappearing under the covers long enough for Murphy to tend to the prince.

The prince who still hadn’t cleaned up the shattered inkwell, and also wanted his armor polished and his sword sharpened, evidently feeling less generous today than he had been the night previous. Apparently someone had forgotten to bring him lunch.

When Murphy finally crawled back to his chambers, night had fallen. A square of moonlight with a calla lily silhouette carved into it fell from the window and laid long and leisurely across the stone floor. 

He thought he and Lexa ought to go to see the druids just before sunrise, so the prince wouldn’t follow but the ride would be daylit.

Murphy summoned a log of firewood from the stack by the furnace and fed it to the flames, and in the burst of burning ash he saw Lexa’s eyes, open and lost. She reminded Murphy of himself the night after Mbege died, lying in front of the doctor’s fire, grieving and raging against the world with a dragon conjured in sparks.

Murphy sat gingerly on the end of the bed, and Lexa’s eyes fluttered.

“They’re all gone,” she said quietly. “All but me.”

He stared into the fire. “You’ll meet new people. It won’t always hurt so bad.”

“I don’t want new people. I want mine,” murmured Lexa, pulling her knees to her chest.

Murphy didn’t know what to say when all his own empty spaces still howled, remembering they were hollow whenever wind blew in. But he did laugh. He did smile. He did love.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, and hoped it didn’t sound like a platitude, because for once he meant what he said. “The druids are nice.”

Tears gleamed in Lexa’s eyes. “They cut off her head. Costia. She was quick, and beautiful, and I loved her. And they cut off her head.”

“So, what? You’re just gonna give up?” asked Murphy, perhaps harshly, but Lexa was scaring him. 

“There were thousands of us and now I am the very last, and no one weeps for them. Their blood goes unanswered. How can I suffer that?”

“For the greater good, just like I have. And then, someday, maybe we can be happy again.”

Murphy never was good at comforting others. The dragon coiled up tighter, her lip twitching with anger even as her tears spilled over, her stoic face tumbling apart into desperate emotion. “Leave me be,” she pleaded, and Murphy did.

☆☆☆

He meant to stay awake. In fact, he was sure he had never lain on the bed. When he woke it was still dark out, the creeping navy hands of dawn pushing up, struggling, against the horizon. He was confused and cotton-headed, like his mind was just then coming into its own, as if he’d been… charmed.

Murphy sat up rigidly, searching. Lexa was gone, and the sound that had woken him was the bells. He crawled to the window, his limbs too uncooperative to stand on, and hoisted himself up against the wooden slab.

The petals of his lily by the window were traced in orange, firelight reflections seeping through the glass. Murphy watched flame lick the edges of the upper town, and heard more than he saw the tavern crumble, all under an early morning moon watching with utter impartiality.

“Bellamy,” he said, his tongue thick. “Bellamy!”

He was limping somewhat, trudging toward the communicating door by sliding along the countertop edge, when the prince entered with such alarm and ferocity that the door might have splintered beneath his hand.

Murphy weakly pointed at the window. Bellamy swept forward to hoist Murphy up, yanking Murphy’s arm across his shoulders. “I’m aware,” he snapped. “I'm on my way down. What the hell happened to you?”

“Poisoned,” Murphy lied, “I’ll live. Get me to the courtyard.”

“Oh, and what exactly will you do?” jabbed Bellamy, though he was rushing them down the stairs as fast as he could go, weighed down as he was by his chainmail and his inebriated manservant who, by all appearances, suffered from life-endangering FOMO.

“I’ll protect you,” garbled Murphy, and though Bellamy did not deign to answer and likely rolled his eyes, Murphy felt the gloved grip around his waist tighten.

The castle doors were already flung wide. There was a body lying dead on the steps. And beyond that, Arkadia was burning to the ground.

The air reeked of smoke and soot, and gray ash blew on the wind, dark against the dawn sky. Flames gnawed on buildings and ripped them down, tearing board and stone apart. Screams rose up and died before they were finished.

A column of fire shot from the sky and dragged, ravenous, through the debris. A black dragon’s wings beat another cloud of ash from the earth.

“Gods almighty,” whispered Bellamy, and Murphy closed his eyes, understanding piercing through him like a knife in the gut.

Lexa.

Knights young and old called out to their regent, making themselves seen behind shields and the corpses of toppled buildings. Bellamy mapped them out with his eyes and then lowered Murphy to the steps, gently resting his head against the stone stringer. Murphy was carefully hidden in its long shadow.

Bellamy gave no orders as he abandoned Murphy in front of the castle. He drew his sword as he raced down to the courtyard, and stood unhumbled beneath Lexa’s sky, raising his weapon.

“Shoot to kill!” he commanded, and Murphy cried out, trying to get his legs under him. Between Lexa’s fading knockout charm and the fierce, tugging shocks of his magic toward the prince, Murphy still could not clear his head for a matter of life and death.

He groped the stringer of the castle’s steps and searched the sky desperately for Lexa.When he found her, swooping past larger than life, she paid him no attention.

Her curled claw knocked a huddle of knights apart and sent them tumbling, blood splattered across one another’s capes. Sir Sterling’s mail caught on a talon and she carried him a ways up, perhaps unknowingly, and by the time he fought himself free he was too high. He fell like a cobalt meteor against the sunrise, spinning toward the ground, and disappeared behind the towering remains of the city.

The uninjured knights and the prince loaded their crossbows and fired at Lexa, and Murphy tried to beat their bolts out of the sky with his magic but could not think, could scarcely feel his own hands and feet and lips and tongue, and his eyes ached to close and his body tried to pull him forward and down at once.

He trembled with effort as the dragon spewed fire at Sir Monroe and he unearthed the cobblestones beneath her, sending them roiling backwards so that she stumbled and fell out of the way of Lexa’s attack.

With his focus torn from the crossbows, a spray of the bolts embedded themselves in Lexa’s thick skin and scales, but she kept on. Her dark shadow swept again and again over the kingdom leaving lines of fire in her wake, as she sought to wipe out the people of Arkadia like they had wiped out her own.

Murphy was gritting his teeth and willing the wooden roof of the collapsed tavern to tip on its side and shield Sir Jasper, who was dragging Sir Monty and his burned hands to safety, when another barrage of cross bolts tore through the dragon’s wings.

Lexa roared in fury and pain, her wing bunching to her side and sending her plummeting to the earth. She barely controlled her landing, taking several more blackened buildings down as she tumbled into the courtyard.

Her claws dislodged cobblestone and crumbled the fountain apart into meaningless chunks of stone as she searched for purchase, and then she found it, stilling in the destroyed square. For a moment it all fell silent, save for the crackling of fires all around. The knights stared at Lexa’s huge eyes and snarling maw, and Lexa stared at Murphy.

He was on his knees at the foot of the castle stairs, and a shadow fell over him as Bellamy blocked him bodily, holding his sword across his chest.

“You’ll have to go through me,” he said boldly, misunderstanding. But how could he have known that Lexa would never hurt him? That Lexa was his friend. That he was the one who set her free.

That this was all Murphy’s fault.

Lexa didn’t speak, considering Murphy with her gleaming green eyes. Her small ears flattened against her head as his tears tumbled over.

He didn’t know how to save her from this without letting Bellamy die.

She was his dragon. The one who told him stories as a boy. The one that kept him company, when he found himself all alone. The one that made him strong. The one that made him believe. She was _his_ dragon. 

But Bellamy was the reason, the way, and the answer. He was the One True King, and Murphy had, never in so many words but fiercely nonetheless, sworn to that ridiculous dragon with her ridiculous prophecy that he would protect the stupid prince.

Lexa was asking him to choose vengeance or peace, just like she had the night they first met. She had to know he’d already chosen. And he had to believe that, despite her grief and her rage, peace was still what she wanted too.

“Go,” begged Murphy. “Please just go.”

Lexa stayed, and Murphy dropped his head as she raised up onto her claws, looming over them like a black thundercloud.

But she didn’t know she was trapped. She couldn’t fight, or she’d kill Murphy. She couldn’t fly fast enough to escape, her wings riddled with holes. Her eyes widened with realization far too late, and Murphy watched as one of the knights plunged a spear into her belly. Then they were upon her, all of them slicing her legs, stomach, and chest with swords, filling her with bolts and arrows, sticking her with spears.

Lexa never roared nor gnashed her teeth, watching Murphy with sorrowful eyes as she jerked and shuddered, lowering herself onto her haunches as she gave in. Black blood pooled beneath her.

“Stop,” croaked Murphy, before crying out, “Stop!”

Bellamy looked down at him from where he still stood before Murphy, regarding him with concern, and sheathed his sword.

“That’s enough,” he announced to the knights, who were all but bathing themselves in the dragon’s blood. “We don’t want it to fall here. Let it flee elsewhere to die."

They hesitated, unconvinced that the job was done, but eventually the knights obeyed and retreated, giving the dragon space.

Lexa’s massive legs trembled as she slowly stood, and she spread her ragged wings in jerky starts and stops. Murphy bit his tongue as he took in the damage. Her wings were all but hollow bones and shredded leather. She stood in a sea of dark blood and flint scales, and bled from deep gashes in her scarred legs. Her stomach was riddled with gaping puncture wounds from which her dying body wept.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Murphy, her huge, rumbling voice sounding small and broken, now, out in the open and surrounded by her own destruction. “I could not live with it. And I should never have asked you to live with yours.”

Murphy couldn’t answer, not with his throat thick and the eyes of all the knights searching, wondering who the dying dragon was speaking to.

With one last look at Murphy she beat what was left of her wings and took flight, still nearly bowling the knights over with the ring of wind and ash it stirred.

In the sky she struggled, teetering and dipping in the air. Murphy closed his raw eyes and found his magic entire again, shrunken to something mournful and dull. Still, he willed her lighter, and willed the breeze strong enough to hold her, and when he looked for her again Lexa was gliding smoothly against the rising sun. Then the shape of her became smaller and smaller until at last the pink clouds folded her fading shadow into their embrace, and she was gone.

☆☆☆

The aftermath was a decimated upper town, an estimation of two hundred citizen casualties, a destroyed turret on the southernmost side of the castle, several dead knights, and damn near every room of the castle of Arkadia turned into an infirmary on Bellamy’s order.

Murphy’s apprenticeship was coming in handy in a way he hoped it never would, as he tended to the injured and dying and his hands trembled with the knowledge that every wound was his doing.

The throne room was dotted corner to corner with cots and pallets, but many of the injured were forced to lie on the floor or sit slumped against the wall, nursing gruesome burns and lungs full of smoke and limbs crushed beneath falling debris.

Sir Monty smiled gently at Murphy as he wrapped the knight’s anointed hands with cloth, working carefully and gingerly not to disturb his blisters, and Murphy quirked a brow over a tired eye.

“A mean face and a gentle hand,” teased Sir Monty, before sobering somewhat, searching Murphy’s unhappy expression. “We’re lucky to have you around, Murphy.”

Murphy forced himself to smile. “Drink your water. I’ll get you something for the pain as soon as I can.”

“The citizens first,” the knight insisted, because of course he did.

Murphy then moved to Sir Finn, who was passed out on a cot with gray skin, a deep talon wound dug into his stomach. It had already been dressed by Abby or Clarke, the latter of whom was rushing about the room with a basin, her expression stern and so unlike her usual bright smile.

He thought of how she had taken to Lexa, and how Lexa had taken to her. His heart broke for a moment, and when he turned away from her to preoccupy himself with safer thoughts, he found Sir Monroe huddled close with Sir Miller, weeping into his shoulder. They’d found Sir Sterling, then.

Murphy rushed out of the throne room and walked the halls until he found a servant’s passageway, and he slammed the door behind him, slumping down against it. The dark hallway was lit by no more than a tiny, missing stone of a window high up the wall.

He was all cried out and his head was pounding, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose to will it away, closing his eyes.

What a fucking shitshow.

There was no feasible way he could get away with claiming that his friend nicknamed ‘Dragon,’ who just so happened to show up the day previous, wasn’t the culprit for all this; he’d have to confess to Clarke. Gods knew whether she would turn him in.

As for the destruction, he could maybe, in small and discreet increments, help rebuild the upper town with his magic, or at least try and clear some of the ash. He could set up temporary shelter for the newly homeless in the castle; he was certain Bellamy would allow that. Perhaps he could conjure up lots of healing oils and tinctures and claim he found them stashed somewhere. There were lots of little things he could do.

But he couldn’t bring back the dead. Not any of the citizens, not the knights, and not her.

Murphy thunked his head against the door and it rattled in its socket. He wasn’t so sure his killing curse was the prophecy’s doing after all. Maybe it was just him.

Was he even Murchadh, without Lexa?

He sat a moment longer, gazing up at the little hole in the wall that seemed to really think itself a window. He wished he had such confidence.

The door rattled again, and Murphy hadn’t thunked his head against it, this time. He startled as someone banged on it once more, knocking it against his spine. Murphy stood and backed away from the door.

“Let me in,” begged the stranger outside of it, their voice slurred and almost petulant. “Let me in…”

Murphy didn’t answer, stepping back as the door shivered again.

“Come on. It’s hot out here…” they whined, and then fell silent.

As Murphy listened, the meager afternoon light cast across the stone seemed suddenly to burn a dark amber, like hot syrup pouring sticky and slow into the hallway. Murphy looked out of the window in alarm, and his heart sank.

Perched on the windowsill in front of a blood red sun was a single crimson butterfly, calmly fluttering its wings.

“Shit,” Murphy moaned, and the door collapsed into the hallway, splinters and dust flyingas the stranger bowled him over.

The man knocked him down and fell too, sprawled over Murphy. The warlock struggled to free his hands from between their bodies as the man tried to claw his way onto his feet, grinding his elbows and knees into all of Murphy’s soft parts. Finally, the man was able to stand again and Murphy rolled out of the way just as his boots stomped where Murphy’s face had been. The stranger rushed down the unlit servant’s passageway and disappeared in the dark, and Murphy didn’t hear from him again until he’d reached the next unlocked door and began pounding on it, begging to be let in from the heat.

Murphy scrambled up and inched along the wall until he’d reached the antechamber door, and hesitantly peeked around the corner.

A burn-faced woman was spinning pleasantly in circles in front of the castle doors, and a man whose broken arm should have been in the empty sling dangling beneath his armpit ran by with a broom held over his head like a javelin, and a child was chewing ferociously on the leg of a wooden console, the glass vase of flowers atop it teetering dangerously overhead. 

Murphy thought he’d seen enough to gather what was going on and decide how worried he should be, just before the calm, charming, and grievously injured Sir Finn suddenly dove on a much larger man’s ankles and dragged him to the floor, crawled atop him with his crossbow in hand, and fired a bolt point-blank into the man’s head.

“One day,” pleaded Murphy. “One normal day.”

Then Sir Finn set his wild sights on Murphy, and Murphy split, fleeing to the throne room to find someone sane. It quickly became clear that this was not a kindness the powers that be were inclined to grant him.

Murphy found Clarke crouched over her journal weeping, flipping through blank pages in a miserable frenzy. The doctor was standing behind her, whispering horrible things that Abby would never have said to her daughter, at least when in her right mind. It was unclear whether Clarke was crying because of her mother’s words, or whatever she thought she saw in her book.

That this illness, whatever it was, could make peaceful men violent and loved ones cruel, scared Murphy more than any of Octavia’s curses had yet. They needed each other now more than ever, and in Arkadia’s weakest moment she had finally, _finally,_ found a way to turn them all against each other. 

But Murphy wanted to make amends for his mistakes, and he figured the first thing he could do was save these people from themselves. He probably would have done it anyway seeing as he was, apparently and unfathomably, in the rescuing business now.

In the middle of the throne room Murphy closed his aching eyes and raised his trembling hands. He prayed they wouldn’t remember this when it was over, and then he conjured chains and ropes, and commanded them to restrain the most violent offenders in the castle. He cast paralysis charms and sleeping charms, and vanished weapons, broken glass, and splintered wood. 

The Arkadians in the throne room went down easy and hard. Some, like Clarke, fell gently asleep. Others, like Sir Jasper— who felt compelled to drink all the potions from Clarke’s medicine bag at once— wept and wailed, thrashing against their restraints.

Satisfied that everyone was knocked out or tied down, Murphy rushed out of the throne room and into the hall. He frowned as people chased each other through the corridors, leaving spotty trails of blood, howling in rage and pain and hysteria. They were killing each other, climbing the walls, hurting themselves.

His stomach sank as a serving girl ripped open the castle doors and hurled herself down the steps like she expected to fly, and he heard not only the screams and wild laughter of the chaos floating up from the surviving lower town, but the pounding, rhythmic marching of an army.

Under the bleeding sun, leagues-long troops of witches and warlocks made to seize the castle. They carried red banners through the destruction, each marked by a smoldering of ash across their eyes, like witches burned.

And at the head of the charge was her.

Octavia marched with her head angled down, her dark, straight hair hanging like blades beside a blood-spattered face. She wore a black gown, torn by travel and battle, and sparing armor. It wasn’t as if she needed it, when no man would survive daring to stand in front of her.

Murphy saw no trace of the girl he once knew. She was not a princess, but a warlord. And there was not one of them she would spare.

He abandoned the castle. He had no choice.

Murphy fled to the sparse, empty lawns behind the castle, cast in its towering shadow and shielded from the awful sun. He summoned a wagon from the stables, blackened by soot but not burnt.

There was only person who had to survive this. He prayed the rest of his friends would too.

The army’s marching was getting closer, louder, as Murphy tore up the stairs. He grabbed the steps as he ran, falling over himself to reach the top.

The hall, once he got there, was silent. Murphy crept along the wall, clinging to the cold stone and shying away from the oppressive orange glow forcing its way through the arched windows.

The guards outside of Bellamy’s door had of course abandoned their posts, their spears lying forgotten on the floor. He tentatively reached out and pushed the door in with a single finger, and it slowly creaked open.

Murphy peered around the corner and found Bellamy’s chambers intact and empty, though the communicating door between their rooms was still open. He inched his way inside Bellamy’s chambers, and then his, inspecting his own barren room.

He felt odd, the chaos of the day simmering to a quiet as he looked over the antechamber. His furnace, the fire long since down to ash and coals. His traveling bag, still stuffed with trinkets from the druid camp, one leg of his striped breeches hanging out of the top. His bed, where Lexa had smiled at Clarke, and slept peacefully, and cried. His calla lily on the windowsill, still standing perfect and tall like nothing in the world could have been wrong.

Then the perfect world tipped quickly upward. 

Murphy was sprawled on the floor, the back of his head throbbing. He turned over and scrabbled away as Bellamy descended upon him, mad fury blazing in his eyes.

“This is all your fault,” he growled, looming. “Everything started going wrong as soon as you showed up here.”

Murphy was folded at an awkward angle against the base of the kitchenette counter, and Bellamy’s boots were planted on either side of Murphy’s outstretched legs, but still he searched for an out that didn’t involve using his magic on the prince.

“Bellamy, this isn’t you,” he said, pulling his knees inward and crawling backwards along the lower cabinets. The prince’s dark eyes followed him, his pupils swallowing his irises whole.

“You’re _cursed,”_ snarled Bellamy. “And I won’t let you hurt anyone else.”

Murphy’s breath hitched. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I was trying to protect you. Make things better.”

Bellamy’s fingers tapped on the pommel of his sword, and he smiled a mean smile. “Oh, so _you_ were looking out for _me?”_ He widened his black eyes and shook his hand like he held an invisible tambourine. “Murphy, court jester.”

Murphy couldn’t take it personally. The prince was sick with the fever, just like all the rest.

He stomached the hurt and slid up the stone wall until he was standing, and Bellamy closed in until they were nearly nose-to-nose, his jaw tick, tick, ticking. Murphy could hear his grinding teeth, and his breath coming hot and heavy, and the slow stampede of the army breaching the hill beneath them.

“We’ll die here, both of us, if we don’t leave now. And I’m the only one who can make sure you get out of this alive. On the off-chance you’re still capable of reason, it’s in your best interest to kill me later.”

“Or I could kill you now, and leave by myself,” replied Bellamy, clearly unaware of anything happening outside of the two of them. “You’ve always thought I needed you as much you need me. I’ll be honest, Murphy,” he said quietly, smiling softly. “I don’t.”

His fist creaked around his sword’s hilt, discreet, but not discreet enough for Murphy. He kneed Bellamy in the groin and made a break for it as the prince stumbled back, bellowing in rage, and tried to put some space between them to formulate any sorry excuse for an actual plan.

Murphy didn’t need much, didn’t care for bits and baubles, and had no eye for interior design; he was fine with his barren chambers. Now, though, he desperately wished he had some decorative stone cherub by the door or cooking pot hanging above to bash Bellamy over the head with.

Bellamy gathered himself and stormed toward Murphy, backing him against the strange column in the middle of the room. Sweat was beading on Bellamy’s skin, and his eyes had gone lazy, and darker still.

Murphy had scarcely thought the prince a frightening man before. Intimidating, sure, but never cruel, never severe. As he stood before Murphy now, a hulking shadow against a heavy curtain of blood orange sunlight, Murphy’s heart pounded fiercely, beating backwards in his chest to get away.

“Bellamy,” Murphy said warningly, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s me. Murphy. Your friend.”

The prince shook his head, his mouth hanging open in a slack smile. Then, as simple as drawing a blade or firing a bolt, he said, “Not anymore.”

Murphy stole one last gasp for air before Bellamy’s huge hands were around his throat, squeezing to kill. He clawed at Bellamy’s wrists and shoved at his face, his shoulders, to no avail. The prince only tightened his grip, strangling Murphy with a senseless, single-minded hatred.

He searched Bellamy’s eyes for humanity as Murphy’s own burned and watered, tears trembling on the ledge of his lashes. His lungs were searing with heat, his brain swelling and veins straining, his vision spilling black at its edges and spreading like ink until he gave up seeing.

He could no longer beg or plead or argue, not that he had any delusions he could talk his way out of this one. He could feel Bellamy’s hot skin and the fine hair of his forearms beneath his fingertips, but it was getting harder to think, to move, to hold. There was only one thing left in Murphy’s arsenal.

With the fire inside him licking at its edges, he called upon his magic. It burned through him as if it hated Murphy too, but obediently, begrudgingly, seeped from his fingertips into the prince’s skin.

Murphy swallowed air hungrily as Bellamy’s hands slackened around his throat. His eyes darted desperately for focus as his sight returned, and he watched his charm snake through Bellamy’s veins, black and crawling.

Bellamy let go. He looked down at his hands and the fading black, and then at Murphy, realizing what he’d done. What he was.

For the first time beneath the red sun, the prince seemed lucid. His mindless rage waned, and he stared at his friend, his eyes aflame with hurt, confusion, betrayal. Murphy stared back through a film of tears.

Then Bellamy’s eyes rolled back, and he crashed to the floor.

☆☆☆

The wagon’s wheels laid down pale trails of grass as it rolled alongside the warlock, pulled by an invisible force. The prince’s sleeping body jostled around in the wagon-bed, his sword confiscated and strapped over Murphy’s back.

Murphy looked back only once as they travelled deeper into the woods, and watched as the witches raised their crimson flags over the castle of Arkadia, smoke still rising up from the ruins.

Funny, Murphy thought, how he always found his way back to nothing.


	10. ten

Octavia was a bit of an evil genius. She couldn’t find them, but with some carefully casted storms that petered out the nearer the sky was to the kingdom, she could try and drive them back into her snare.

The red sun had faded back to golden-white, and a perfect halo of clear sky and sunshine laid over Arkadia, shining on the witch army’s flags.

Meanwhile Murphy stood, defeated, in the rain.

Her storms raged all around, fearsome westerly winds groping and beating at his wet clothes, hail clattering against the wagon and off of the blue shield of magic hovering over the prince’s prone body. Murphy let the hail bruise him and the rain soak him to the tired bone, and only sighed as lightning crashed nearby, felling a tree.

They stood at the mouth of a cave. Murphy was suspicious of this cave, and thus had stood outside of it for upwards of ten thunderclaps so far. His magic had drawn him there, tapping at his chest, pushing him toward the little grotto like it did when Bellamy was in trouble. They needed shelter, badly, and he knew he had no choice. But his magic always had a secret agenda, and he dreaded dealing with whatever it wanted him to discover next.

He really just wanted a fucking nap.

“Maybe it’ll be something nice for once. Like never-ending cakes or a litter of kittens,” said Murphy over the pounding rain, dragging a finger along the wagon’s shaft to spell it into moving again. It rolled unhurriedly alongside him as they ventured into the mouth of the cave, breaching a resilient curtain of hanging moss.

At no surprise at all to Murphy, the cave revealed was no ordinary cave. Wall to ceiling, the cavern was teeming with jagged white crystals. They clung to the stone and to themselves, clawing on top of each other as they grew to reach out to whomever may have entered. They seemed to whisper, desperate for someone to come closer and ask what exactly they wanted to say.

Murphy sighed, dripping rainwater on the floor. “Or a giant, scary cave full of ominous talking crystals. That works too.”

The cave was dark, just barely illuminated by the faint glow of the crystals and flashes of lightning from outside, but dry, free of creeping crawling things, and packed with soft dirt. Murphy had taken refuge in worse places.

He pinched the hem of his tunic and wicked the water away with a drying charm, giving the same treatment to his breeches and boots. It looked like the prince had stayed dry beneath Murphy’s shield. He let it fall, and the blue plane of light faded into falling stars over Bellamy’s head until it was gone.

Lexa would have scolded him for using magic so openly before the prince. But Lexa was dead, and Murphy’s magic wasn’t much of a secret anymore.

He stared down at the prince in the wagon bed. Bellamy’s short lashes laid still against his freckled cheeks, and his lips were slightly parted in sleep. His curls were frizzy with dried sweat from his fever, which had long since gone down. His scarred hands which had so recently been around Murphy’s throat were turned up by his sides, vulnerable. 

Murphy unthinkingly reached into the wagon to sketch a finger over the lines of Bellamy’s open palm. It was still his friends’ skin, calloused and warm, accepting of Murphy’s touch.

His magic, as always, was very fascinated by the feeling of Bellamy. Murphy felt suddenly ashamed and drew away, brushing his hands together as if clearing dust, and stared out at the rain through the narrow slits in the hanging moss.

He summoned waterlogged wood and kindling from the forest outside and charmed it dry, and had his magic arrange it into a crosshatched pile. He hadn’t summoned any rocks, but a few stones tapped happily inside in a neat little line. Murphy crossed his arms and leaned his head against the crystalline wall, and watched the fire burst to life and the stones swirl into a perfect ring around the small blaze.

Then an especially bright flash of lightning startled him and the fire flared too, raising its hackles. He glanced behind himself just as the subsequent bang of thunder rolled, and found the prince sitting up in the wagon bed, watching him.

Only Bellamy wasn’t watching Murphy. His gaze was on the little campfire, which leaned curiously toward the prince. They considered each other a while longer, before Murphy’s fire shrank back, unhappy with whatever murderous thoughts Bellamy was clearly having about it.

The prince’s eyes slid slowly to Murphy. He looked as if he was trying to identify a stranger. A criminal. His stare fell to the handprint bruises Murphy could feel blooming on the skin of his neck, but Bellamy said nothing about them.

He climbed out of the wagon and immediately laid a hand on the empty air at his hip before frowning sharply up at his belt, transfigured into a shoulder harness across Murphy’s chest.

“My sword,” he demanded.

Murphy obliged, lifting the harness over his head and spelling it back into a belt. He held the belt and scabbard out in front of him, but Bellamy came no closer, looking warily at the warlock.

“Shall I turn around and close my eyes, your highness?”

“Shut up,” Bellamy snapped, coming forward to snatch the belt and scabbard from Murphy’s grasp and hook it around his waist. Then— because he was a Blake, after all— he swiftly drew his sword.

Murphy smiled as Bellamy pinned him between crystals, the glinting tip of his sword teasing Murphy’s jugular.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the wagon.”

“I should run you through. Right here, right now.”

Murphy didn’t have anything to say to that, and stared up at the cave’s ceiling where the crystals danced with light, his head tilted as far back and away from the sword’s point as it could go. Not that it would save him. He supposed he just didn’t want to see the hate in Bellamy’s eyes when it happened.

The sword wavered, scratching lightly at Murphy’s skin as Bellamy’s practiced hand shook.

“Was it all a lie?”

Murphy looked down, and found the prince’s mouth folded in a furious, trembling line.

“Which part?” he croaked.

Bellamy’s angry expression wavered with hurt.

“You and me.”

Standing in the great cavern of crystals, with their own reflections mirrored back at them at every angle and their voices echoing all around, there was nothing he could have gotten away with but the truth. And looking at Bellamy’s desperate eyes in every flash of lightning, he wouldn’t have wanted to lie.

“Sire,” said Murphy, “You and I might be the only thing I’ve ever been honest about.”

Bellamy searched his eyes for deceit, or humor, or cruelty. He flinched back when he found nothing of the sort, drawing the sword’s point from Murphy’s throat enough for him to swallow, but not entirely.

“I don’t understand. You had so many chances to kill me. What did you want from me?” whispered the prince.

“I did want to kill you,” Murphy confessed, smiling apologetically as Bellamy’s brows creased and his glove squeaked around the hilt of his sword. “But then I wanted you to live. And I would have done anything to make sure of it.”

Bellamy tightened his grip and his frowned deepened, every detail upsetting him, confusing him more. _“Why?”_

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Murphy, tilting his head to the side. Bellamy shook his own.

“I’ve killed sorcerers. I would have killed you. I _should_ kill you.” As if to prove a point to himself, he turned the hilt of his sword in hand and pressed the edge of the blade to Murphy’s blue throat, closing in until his breath was warm on Murphy’s cheek. “What makes you think I won’t?”

The warlock’s mind raced with escape plans, but he couldn’t try anything with the blade so close. Neither did he want to harm the prince. “I don’t believe you wouldn’t. I guess I was just… hoping,” he answered. “Might have been stupid of me.”

The prince breathed raggedly, eyes flitting wildly over the side of Murphy’s cringing face. He grit his teeth and flexed his fist around his sword’s hilt, working up his nerve. Murphy couldn’t quite see his eyes anymore, his head turned so far to the side as it was, and so he instead watched the campfire jump with every frantic beat of his heart. 

For a moment, Murphy thought Bellamy might really do it. Wedge the blade in, drag it through the skin and sinew, the muscle and veins of Murphy’s neck. Put him down like a dog, watch him bleed and die. Just another sorcerer, swiftly taken care of.

Murphy squeezed his eyes shut. The blade seemed to ease up from his throat, and then Bellamy let out an anguished noise and flung his sword to the ground. It clattered unceremoniously to the dirt between their feet.

“Damn it, Murphy,” the prince swore, shoving himself off the crystal wall and pacing until he could grip the edge of the wagon, shoulders bowed and head hung. “I trusted you.”

Murphy held his throat. “I never betrayed you. Everything I did, I did for you.”

“Oh, you lied for _my_ benefit?” Bellamy scoffed, turning a mean look on Murphy.

“I couldn’t have been there for you if I was executed. Guess I’m one of those weird folks who like their head on their shoulders.”

“No one forced you to practice sorcery.”

“I was born like this,” Murphy muttered, casting his gaze toward the little shivering rocks around the fire, unsettled by Murphy’s discomfort but equally unwilling to leave their posts. He saw that Bellamy was watching the stones, too. He glanced up at Murphy’s quaking hands. Then his chest, and the pulsing fire. “It’s part of me,” Murphy said quietly. “Like breathing.”

It was Bellamy’s begrudging, pessimistic curiosity about everything that made him wonder at all, but his investigative stare soon fell from Murphy and he moved to the mouth of the cave, staring broodingly out at the sharp, blowing sheets of rain.

“My mother is at Octavia’s mercy right now. And I abandoned her, abandoned all of them. Ran off to hide with a sorcerer.”

“Well, ‘ran’ is a strong word for it.”

Bellamy ignored him, and Murphy sighed, daring to edge closer.

“Look. The queen isn’t a threat to Octavia, she’ll be fine. When your sister gets too tired to keep up the storms we’ll go back and set it all right.”

“There is no _‘we,’_ ” Bellamy said, still with his back to Murphy. “When the storms pass, you and I will go our separate ways. If I ever see you near my kingdom again, I will kill you. Understand?”

And that— that Bellamy could not kill him now but could send him away and forget him, like he was nothing— made Murphy want to bring the cave down on them both.

His eyes burned. “Screw you.”

Bellamy turned abruptly, brows skewed. “Excuse me?”

The prince backed up as far into the hanging moss as he could go as the warlock advanced on him, ranting, “Do you even know how many times I’ve saved your ass? Do you know what I’ve done, what I’ve _lost,_ to protect you? And never once got a thank you! Now you want to banish me for it?”

Bellamy stared, feigning indignant anger but clearly bewildered, as Murphy raised a hand as if to shove him or punch him or… or… But did nothing, holding it trembling in the air before Bellamy’s face.

“This prophecy has taken _everything_ from me. My family, my friends, my home, my freedom, my choice. My life has narrowed down to a little… fucking—” Murphy pinched the air in front of Bellamy, gritting his teeth. “To _you!”_

Still trying his best to appear annoyed rather than startled, Bellamy scoffed, “What the hell are you talking about? What prophecy?”

“You really wanna know? Fine,” spat Murphy. “The prophecy the centuries-old dragon beneath the castle told me about, which says my true name is Murchadh and I am, and I quote, the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth, and you are the One True King and I have to protect you because together we’re supposed to unite the thirteen kingdoms and return magic to the land. _That_ stupid goddamn prophecy.”

Bellamy stared for a long time, as Murphy’s chest heaved. Then the prince slowly began nodding his head, a small smile quirking on his lips. “I get it,” he said. “You really are touched in the head.”

“I’m telling the truth,” snapped Murphy, baring his teeth against a flash of lightning.

“No,” Bellamy explained slowly, “You’re a sorcerer who risked his life living in Arkadia because he thinks he’s some kind of legendary hero who’s going to save his kind from the slaughter. But I think, deep down, you know that all you are is a criminal.”

“Me? _I_ want to be a hero?” barked Murphy. “Not the guy who sacrifices his own morals to do what anyone else tells him will save his kingdom?”

Bellamy’s expression twisted in righteous fury. “I did what I believed was right!”  


“You don’t even know what you believe!” Murphy laughed, eyes wide and astonished. “You scream in your sleep! You _apologize!_ Tell me, how much of your soul have you sold to convince yourself you’re a good person? That you’re on the right side of someone else’s war?”

Murphy pushed them back as he spoke, and by now they were in the rain, just outside of the eye of the storm, pelted by shards of hail as lightning seared the world around them and thunder struck at the end of every gasping breath.

“You asked me if it was all a lie. Now this is me asking you.”

Under trickling rivulets of water, Bellamy’s anger washed away. He looked desperate and hopeless, searching Murphy’s eyes. He seemed to Murphy a wooden boy, his rotten limbs falling apart beneath the pouring rain. When he spoke, his voice was small and crumbling.

“Why? If that’s how you see me, then why would you trust me to one day save your people?”

Raindrops collected in the bow of Bellamy’s parted lips, plum with cold, and made dark triangles of his lashes. Murphy remembered when they laid on the western shore in the rain, blood running into the black rocks. Bellamy was fierce and brave that day like so many others, and had found Murphy’s eyes when he was stood in the center of the hydra and terror struck, looking for an answer in a friend.

They were a couple of liars and wannabes and fuck-ups giving away every part of themselves to do what they were told. But when it was just the two of them at the end of world, Murphy believed in him, and Bellamy believed in Murphy.

“I just do.”

Bellamy stayed standing in the rain, his eyes flitting around Murphy’s face. Their hair was plastered to their foreheads and cheeks, and their clothes were clinging to their skin. In hindsight, shoving Bellamy out into the storm and stalking after him might have been a tad dramatic.

Murphy gestured back toward the cave and muttered, “Glad we got that off of our chests. I feel much better.” He didn’t wait for Bellamy to follow, pushing through the moss and settling down by the campfire, charming himself dry again.

The prince hesitantly followed not long after, sitting against the wall with his back to Murphy and facing the rain, drenched and shivering. Murphy watched in dismay as puddles gradually gathered around the prince.

He figured the whole ‘I-have-magic’ thing couldn’t get much worse, but didn’t want to scare Bellamy anymore than he already had. 

Tentatively, he brought the rocks to life and had them tiptoe toward the prince in a duckling row. Their cheerful tapping echoed around the cave, and Bellamy tried to ignore them as they danced into a circle and settled at his side. He straightened up and irritably huddled closer to the wall as the firewood followed, the flames gathering at the tops of each twig so they walked benignly toward him like clumsy little candles.

He said nothing as the fire built itself up. But he wasn’t going to get dry, shying away from the flames with his arms crossed over his chest, and Murphy wasn’t very good at letting things be. The fire leaned inconspicuously towards the prince, poking at his elbow. “Stop it,” snapped Bellamy. The fire grumpily shrank low.

A quiet moment passed, before a few more branches and stones rolled into the cavern and shook themselves dry, sending up steam, and hopped into the fire pit. Bellamy turned his head just enough to watch it happen, and frowned deeply as a misshapen hand formed from the smoke, waving hello.

“Do you think this is funny?” asked Bellamy, glaring over his shoulder at where Murphy sat cross-legged in the middle of the cave.

Murphy shrugged. “I’m not doing it,” he said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. It was more like his magic wanted to, always tugging at Murphy’s sleeve to do nice things for Bellamy, and Murphy didn’t feel like fighting it anymore. “Maybe it likes you.”

“Because you're so crazy about me,” Bellamy said sarcastically, spitting it out like he thought it was all a joke made at his expense. Murphy had to begrudgingly acknowledge his intuition about Murphy’s frankly embarrassing emotional connection to his magic. Most kids grew out of that. Murphy wasn’t most kids.

The warlock pulled his knees to his chest and backed up against the wall to shield himself behind protruding crystals. “I don’t just stick around because of the prophecy, you know,” he confessed. Bellamy was quiet, and Murphy could no longer see where he was looking. 

When the prince spoke at last, there was a surprising lilt of humor in his voice. “The only friend I’ve got is a delusional sorcerer. Is there anywhere in this life that I didn’t go wrong?”

“That’s ‘the most delusional sorcerer to ever walk the earth’ to you,” corrected Murphy, and grinned as he heard Bellamy laugh, and mutter about things rolling off of tongues. Finally, Murphy thought. Finally.

Outside, the sun had finally set behind the dark thunderclouds, and night had folded over the smoldering sky. The cave shone only with the dim glow of crystals. An unrelenting rain still pounded against the rock above their heads.

Eventually, the prince thunked his head against a crystal, slumping back against the cavern wall. “You stood by me as I executed sorcerers. You never said anything about magic. But you weren’t a spy for my sister, you came before she… before. All that time— I just wonder… Did you expect me to change my mind?”

Murphy tilted his own head back against the wall, gazing up at the twinkling ceiling. “I thought, with time, that I could make you see it wasn’t a choice. That magic wasn’t inherently evil. But then Octavia’s big debut happened, which wasn’t exactly a prime example of magic being used for good, and at that point I kind of had a lot on my plate.”

“All her curses. You were the one who broke them, weren’t you?”

Murphy snorted. Getting the credit he was due was becoming increasingly anticlimactic and less than vindicating. “Ding ding ding. How’d you guess?”

“I don’t know another sorcerer stupid enough to try and save Arkadia,” said Bellamy. “You’re an enigma, Murphy.”

Murphy smiled. “How’s that?”

“Octavia’s trying to bring magic back, save the sorcerers, get revenge for them. She might already have done it. Why would you try and stop her?”

His smiled faded as he thought of his father run through, his home burned, the twins taken away in chains, his best friend with a bolt in his neck, and the girl beneath a castle, kept trophy for a monarch’s pride.

“It’s not just about magic,” he said, pulling absently at his fingers. “I’m sick of the violence. The tyrants. The greed. All of it. I’m sick of a handful of narcissists deciding the lives of everyone else.”

“And you believe I’m the one who will change things.”

Murphy shrugged. “A little dragon told me so.”

Past the jutting crystals, Murphy watched what he could see of Bellamy: his polished black boots, his pruny fingertips tracing the intricate silver design on the scabbard at his side. He was thinking, long and hard.

“You’re really serious about this prophecy?” he finally asked.

“Don’t have much else going for me,” reasoned Murphy.

“Then show me,” Bellamy demanded, standing up and coming to loom over Murphy. “If I’m part of this, I deserve to know. Prove to me this isn’t a story you made up to save your own ass.”

Murphy rolled his eyes, running a finger along the pearly, scuffed edge of a crystal beside his head. “And how exactly do you expect me to do that while we’re trapped in a cave, sire?”

“You’re the powerful sorcerer. Figure it out.”

He’d forgotten how petulant and spoiled Bellamy could be when he was feeling especially princely. It wasn’t the first unreasonable demand he’d ever made of Murphy, but it was the first that had ever left his manservant at a loss for how to fulfill it.

Then Murphy’s magic unfurled in his chest like it’d been waiting, and tugged.

It drew his hand back toward the crystal it had just fallen from, and raced from fingertip to fingertip, gently nudging until he’d spread his palm flat against the crystal. Then the whispering he’d heard when he first entered the cave rose up again, and he could almost make out words.

“Are you listening to me?” asked Bellamy, perplexed, as he watched Murphy twist onto his knees and stare into the crystal, listening closely.

_‘Look and see,’_ said the crystals, each of them, all around. _‘Look and see.’_

“I’m going to try something,” declared Murphy, “and if it doesn’t work and I look like an idiot, I figure I’ve already done enough damage to my reputation today that it won’t much matter.” Then he slid his hand to the underside of the crystal, revealing the entirety of the smooth face of it, and said, “Show me the prophecy.”

Like a reflection in foggy water, a faint image shakily formed on the crystal’s face. Murphy felt Bellamy come closer, the line of his leg pressed against Murphy’s back so the prince could lean in and see. It almost startled Murphy enough that he dropped his hand from the crystal, but he shook his head and held on, watching color spread to the edges of the trembling picture.

It was the two of them, standing together in the throne room. Murphy wore a circlet and a silk tunic in a deep blue, and Bellamy wore a crown. They were hunched over a round table, arguing over whatever was written on the parchments beneath their hands. The scene was tense, up until Murphy seemed to mutter something and Bellamy’s expression broke into a smile, and he batted Murphy over the head with a scroll. Then the vision petered out, shivering into white stars that faded like melting snow.

Murphy lowered his hand and sat on his knees, staring at the crystal. Then he looked up at Bellamy, who hadn’t taken his eyes from it.

“We don’t know if it’s real,” he said, though his lips were parted in astonishment, his eyes searching. “They’ve heard everything we’ve said. It could be a trick.”

“Then we ask it something it can’t have gotten from us,” said Murphy, raising up and touching the crystal again. “Show me Octavia.”

The crystal’s surface formed a pale image of Octavia Blake, her forehead painted red with blood over dark, hateful eyes. She had charmed the thrones of Arkadia obsidian black from gilding to gemstone, and sat in the queen’s seat like she was born to be there. This close, Murphy could see a druid triskelion tattooed on her bicep. But the chieftains would never have abided by this. By her.

When Murphy looked up at Bellamy as the image started to fade, his expression was conflicted. His eyes were tight with anger, but also with regret.

“Show me the queen,” said Murphy, and the crystal did.

Bellamy fell to his knees beside Murphy as the crystal offered a vision of the emotionless Queen Aurora, in her armchair by the arched windows of her chambers. Two armored, ash-streaked witches stood in front of the chamber doors and watched Queen Aurora’s nervous serving girl struggle to feed her charge, every slice of cheese wobbling between her fingers. But she was alive. Even if that’s all she ever would be, Aurora Blake was alive. Murphy heard more than he saw Bellamy’s relief, a quiet sigh tumbling from him.

Then Bellamy seemed to have a surge of determination, and his hand shot out to flatten against the underside of the crystal. He trapped Murphy’s pinky finger beneath his. 

“Show us how we win this war,” the prince demanded, and the crystal eagerly obeyed, bringing another scene to the surface. Murphy didn’t miss the use of the word _‘we.’_

As the image formed, it took Murphy a moment to comprehend what he was seeing. The vision was not any person in a room, but smooth, curving lines, and soft shadows burying the rest. He finally made out dark hair curling around the shell of an ear, a straight nose and heavy brows over blue eyes, and freckled skin smeared with dried, flaking blood. It was a vision of them, quite close to their faces, as if nothing around them was relevant to the answer the crystal was trying to give.

The image shivered as crystal-Murphy leaned closer to crystal-Bellamy’s face. A tear raced down Murphy’s cheek, and he held the prince’s bloodied face gently in his hands. Bellamy whispered something, weakly, his earthen eyes half-lidded, and whatever he said made Murphy bring himself the rest of the way to Bellamy’s lips. And then he kissed him.

Murphy nearly let go of the crystal, but not quite.

With their breath held tight in their chests, they watched Murphy’s pink lips drag against Bellamy’s, pale and flecked with blood and notched by that little scar of his. The curve of Bellamy’s freckled nose, brushing against the smooth ridge of Murphy’s as he let himself be kissed.

Bellamy abruptly snatched his hand from the crystal and turned away before the scene had ended, and Murphy’s eyes chased the fading remnants of it as it shivered out, abandoned.

When it was gone completely and Murphy finally sat back on his heels, he hesitantly looked to his right. Bellamy swallowed, his eyes flitting briefly to Murphy’s before skittering away again. There was a dark, wine blush sitting high on his cheeks and pinching the rims of his ears. Murphy’s own face was searingly warm, but he never did have the good grace to stop staring.

The prince parted his lips a few times as if to speak, which Murphy certainly noticed like had never noticed before, but Bellamy never got a word out. Eventually he gave up, his expression twisted in discomfort.

“Six out of ten,” said Murphy at last, his voice shaking only just. “I’ve seen better.”

Bellamy looked at him incredulously beneath his brows, a smile stretching across his face. “You’re insufferable.”

“Clearly you can suffer me a little,” replied Murphy, tilting his head toward the crystal. Bellamy reached out and shoved him, blushing fiercely, and Murphy laughed. And something that he hadn’t known was broken sealed its cracks and settled in him.

Murphy took a quiet moment to wonder what the kiss meant, or would mean. Lust? Love?

He had never thought of it long enough to put into words, but of course he was attracted to Bellamy. The prince’s touch made him shiver, and the sight of him sometimes made Murphy’s heart beat faster, and he’d dreamt of him more times than he could count. 

He’d thought it was his magic that was so fond of the prince, but maybe even if Murphy were a mere man, he still would have lost a little bit of control over Bellamy Blake.

And as for love…

He glanced at Bellamy out of the corner of his eye, where the prince was resting his chin on his knee, once again staring out at the dark rain in deep thought.

Murphy was not so surprised to find that one wasn’t a difficult question to answer at all. He’d said it himself: all this had stopped being about just the prophecy long ago.

Perhaps it wasn’t the same for Bellamy, who had been weak and pliant in the vision, and had only parted his pale lips and let Murphy pour his love in. But Murphy knew now what he felt, and wasn’t too terribly heartbroken by the idea that the prince might not think of him the same way.

Maybe one day, when magic returned and peace reigned and all Murphy had to worry about was whether the boy loved him back— maybe then his heart would break. But here, just on the edge of the eye of the storm, Bellamy wanting still to fight by his side was more than enough.

“I looked bad, didn’t I?” said Bellamy. “I looked like I was… Like she got her way.”

Murphy glanced at the crystal, recalling Bellamy’s wan face and lips, his weak constitution, and his skin tainted with blood.

“We can’t jump to conclusions. Maybe it was someone else’s blood, and you were just… tired. We expect an epic battle, right?”

“You were crying,” Bellamy pointed out.

“I cry all the time,” replied Murphy. “I’m a sensitive man.”

Bellamy looked skeptical, and turned to gaze out at the rain again. “I’ve lost the kingdom. I’ve lost my people’s trust. I’m not fit to be a knight, and I’m not fit to be their king. If all I can offer them now is my life, then that’s what I’ll give.”

Oh, great. More tragic hero bullshit.

“Don’t be stupid,” muttered Murphy. “No one’s dying.”

“If it's destined—“

“Fuck destiny.”

Bellamy shook his head in exasperation and grinned bittersweetly. “I don’t think that’s how this works, Murphy.”

“No,” said Murphy, standing up and brushing off his hands. “You’re not giving up. I’m Murchadh. You’re the One True King. If we don’t get to write our own damn story, who does?”

Bellamy furrowed his brows, but looked amused. “Weren’t you just telling me you dedicated your life to a prophecy?”

“I’m a selective listener,” argued Murphy, and sighed as Bellamy pulled his knee closer to his chest, hunching in on himself. “I won’t let you die, Bellamy. You’re meant to be king.”

Bellamy didn’t seem convinced, and after a long time of watching the rain, he folded up his jacket and lay down, prepared to wait out the storm and march to his death.

But Murphy, who always had been a selfish bastard, wanted Bellamy to live. And there was nothing he wouldn’t do to make sure of it.

☆☆☆

Arkadia was a wasteland.

When Bellamy’s eyes closed and his breathing evened out in sleep, Murphy put up his shields and summoned an orb of light to shine his way. Then he trudged through the ferocious, grappling weather to the place where the night sky shone clear, dotted with twinkling stars that were watching closely.

He ached by the time he arrived, but forgot his pain as he found the kingdom smoldering. Witches and warlocks painted with ash patrolled the blackened streets, smeared with bodies and blood from every disaster that had lain waste to them since yesterday’s morning sun had made the mistake of rising.

Murphy found the first of his friends in the blacksmith’s shop.

Lit up by faint candlelight and flashes of lightning in the distance, Clarke and Raven’s faces as a sopping Murphy stepped inside, still alive hours after outing himself as a sorcerer in the throne room of Arkadia’s castle, were no less than priceless.

He didn’t know what they would do, how they might think of him now. Raven had harbored a sorcerer before, but she loved Octavia in a way that Murphy wasn’t sure he contended with. And Clarke… Clarke was kind, and caring, and understanding, and all but a sister to him— but Murphy didn’t have a clue where she drew her line in the sand.

When he found himself buried in their arms, soaking wet and all, Murphy finally cried.

“You idiot!” shouted Raven, lifting her face from his shoulder just long enough to look at him before she yanked Murphy in again, squeezing him like she couldn’t decide whether she loved him or wanted to kill him.

In his other arm, Clarke didn’t say a word. Murphy stared at her through a wobbling film of tears as she smoothed wet strands of hair from his cheeks and tucked them behind his ears. At long last, she said, “I knew you were touched in the head.”

“Yeah. That’s becoming an increasingly popular opinion,” laughed Murphy, and Clarke stretched up onto her toes to press a kiss to the lucky tear that had escaped.

“Don’t ever lie to me again,” she snapped, and then finally stepped back beside Raven and wiped at her tunic, spotty now with secondhand rainwater. “What do you need? Or should I say, what does the prince need?”

Murphy smiled. Always right to business with those two. He looked to Raven hopefully, and said, “I need the strongest sword you’ve got.”

Raven straightened up, interested, and ushered him into the back of her shop. It was a cramped and cold room made even more crowded by the extensive and intimidating collection of swords, knives, axes, chains, lances, and arrowheads, all either propped upon the wall or piled on the floor and workbenches, and Murphy imagined the trap door beneath the table probably harbored endless more. Raven was not a wealthy woman, but Lady Octavia would have bought her all the iron and steel in the world.

From a cabinet that Murphy hadn’t even noticed upon entering, though it was thoroughly locked and had taken a bit of wrestling with to get open, Raven materialized perhaps the most beautiful sword he had ever seen.

It was a long, sturdy steel blade, its deadly sharp edge glinting under the moonlight. Its hilt was crafted from gold, the cross-bar and hand-guards intricately molded with the serpentine veins of curling vines. The fig-shaped pommel was studded with sapphire, sparkling Blake blue. The gems did not look lavish in such a bold sword, but recalled the glinting eyes of a predator. Nor did the twining vines appear delicate around the hilt, but overtaking, imprisoning.

Raven laid it across her palms. “The king commissioned a sword from my mentor, Sinclair. He died before Sinclair was able to give it to him. He never sold it. Even after Sinclair died, I kept it locked up in here.”

Murphy stepped back as Raven offered him the sword. He hadn’t meant a weapon with so much sentimental value, nor one so fine. Not for what he planned to do with it. “Raven, I can’t…”

“Sinclair smithed this to withstand generations of use. He wanted to make something the king could pass down to his son. I guess, this way, it’ll finally be where it belongs.”

Murphy accepted it in, for once, reverent hands, resting the tall blade against his shoulder. He hoped his eyes communicated the gratitude he felt, and they must have, because Raven nodded and closed Sinclair’s cabinet, smiling as she smoothed her hand down the old wood.

“What exactly are you plotting?” asked Clarke, her brow quirked in suspicious interest.

“Wouldn’t you rather I show you than tell?” answered Murphy. “After all, I’m in need of an audience.”

☆☆☆

Raven took immediately to investigating the dome that had been cast over the druid camp to protect them from the storms, and Clarke had been descended upon by pixies, each of them fascinated with her golden hair.

Murphy was still bent double and clutching his stomach long after they’d wandered off. Anya laughed their low, cool laugh when they laid eyes on him, and with a friendly smack of yellow sparks to his back they sank some sort of healing charm into his skin, vanishing the wooziness altogether.

“Appearing never did sit right with you,” they said, and looked a bit unimpressed, which was Anya for ‘I’m very glad to see you.’

“Does popping through time and space sit right with anyone?”

“Your little friends didn’t seem to mind.”

“They weren’t the ones holding the reigns,” Murphy grumbled, straightening up and nodding first at Indra, who was vigorously cleaning pots, and then tried to greet Luna, though the chieftain was engaged in trying to endear Raven to the water sprites, who must have smelled the metal on her and instead kept flinging raindrops at Raven’s boots.

“Sorry to wake you guys,” Murphy apologized, glancing sheepishly around at the dark camp, all the other druids asleep on bedrolls beneath the stars or snoring in their tents.

“We nap,” said Anya, with a shrug. “Besides, any of us would sooner go without sleep for ten weeks than reject the great sorcerer when he is in need of our service.” He could never tell when they were being sarcastic or not.

“Not sleeping for ten weeks won’t be necessary, but I do need to call on the calvary.”

“We don’t have a calvary.”

“No, _you’re_ the calvary.”

“We’re druids.”

“Yes, I— “ Murphy huffed, and tried starting from scratch. “Anya, I need you guys to be at the crystal cave in the Shallow Valley at sunrise, then follow Prince Bellamy and I to Arkadia and defend us so we can storm the castle. If you’re up for it.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say that?” said Anya, waving a flippant hand. “We’ll be there.”

Murphy shook his head, accepted Anya’s forearm into his grasp as they offered it and sealed the deal. He never thought he’d much appreciate the overeager worship of the druids, but as the prophecy came closer to reality… well, it was nice to know he didn’t have to do it all alone.

“Before you return to coddling your prince,” quipped Anya, “I think there’s someone you ought to see.”

“Emori? She’s long gone by now.”

Anya tilted their head toward the infirmary, heavily guarded as always by the shield and the Caladrius. “Just go say hello.”

Murphy glanced warily at the chieftain as he passed, but Anya’s expression, as usual, revealed nothing. The blue shield around the hospital rippled as it recognized him and allowed him to pass through, and despite not knowing who awaited him, Murphy took one last readying breath before he laid his hand against the door of branches. Then he pushed it in, and not for the first time that night, tears sprang to his eyes.

On a cot in the corner of the empty infirmary was a thin and pale girl, all long oak hair and green eyes like moons.

“Lexa,” breathed Murphy.

The shapeshifter slept wrapped around herself like she still had a mace for a tail and shrouding wings to hide beneath, and creakily uncurled at the sound of his voice. When her sleep-addled mind cleared, she unfolded entirely, her lips parting in astonishment. 

With tears brimming in her eyes too, Lexa slowly crossed the infirmary, her black nightdress whispering over the floor of fronds.

He expected her to meet him with anger over letting the knights nearly kill her, or for her to fret over the state of the kingdom, or inquire about the prophecy’s progress. Instead, all Lexa had to say was, _“Murphy,”_ and then he pulled her into his arms, felt her hands clinging to his back and her face hidden in his shoulder as she wept.

“Don’t be sorry,” Murphy croaked, trying not to squeeze her too tightly. He felt a swell of love and mutual trust, all of it so rare to him. Here was the single most terrifying and powerful being he knew, small in his arms, crying in her nightdress. He said it again. “Don’t be sorry.”

When they at last separated— Lexa’s face miraculously unblemished despite her tears, damn her— she eyed the sword-shaped bundle of cloth he’d abandoned on the floor.

“For the prince,” explained Murphy, wiping his tears on his shoulder as he bent to retrieve it. He unwound the cloth and presented the beautiful sword, and Lexa took it gingerly in her hands, turning it over and over. “I asked my friend Raven for the strongest sword she had. I plan to… well, let’s just say I’m getting creative in motivating the One Sad King.”

“A blade burnished in dragon’s fire is unbreakable, impervious to curses,” mused Lexa, watching her reflection in the steel. “Allow me to make it up to you both, in this one small way.”

Murphy wanted to offer platitudes about how there was no need, and she owed them nothing, and he understood, understood, _understood._ But when had Lexa ever listened to him?

He swept out his hands in acquiescence and gave her a wide berth, and watched as Lexa gracefully swept her bare foot across the fronds, casting some kind of protective charm beneath her that lit up in complicated runes before fading away again. Then she held the sword hilt tightly before her in both hands, its blade standing tall and sharp between her eyes, and she took a deep breath.

Fire shot in ferocious twin billows from the girl’s nose, roiling with heat and light and searing the steel a volcanic red, though Lexa never even flinched from the burning metal. When she was done she merely let her mouth fall open again, raising a brow as Murphy stared at the dark plume of smoke tumbling from her lips.

She cast a simple cooling charm on the sword, and swirling patterns of frost crept up the steel before crumbling away in falling snowflakes, revealing the sword’s much glossier blade. She held it out to him like she had only given it a once-over with a whetstone.

“You dragons are so weird,” said Murphy, and Lexa’s smile was a little uncharacteristically devious. “I figure you’ve already read my mind and know what I’m planning. So, O Ancient One, you in need of afternoon plans?”

Lexa bowed her head, and looked up at him beneath her brows. Her magnificent eyes bore meaningfully into his. “I told you once before, young warlock. I would gladly die fighting by your side.”

☆☆☆

The storms subsided, and in the morning the sun rose over the cave of crystals in the Shallow Valley. Bright, beautiful, untouched, and full of promise.

Murphy was cooking robin’s eggs over the gray coals of the campfire, which had leapt for joy at his return sometime before dawn and now seemed perfectly content to watch him work, shying politely away from his hands.

“Morning sunshine,” greeted Murphy as the prince roused, groaning over his aching bones.

Bellamy sniffed. “Eggs?”

“Just the way you like them,” said Murphy, sliding him a small, hideously mangled and slightly burnt egg on a beech tree leaf.

Bellamy curled his lip, but allowed the offering to enter his personal space. However he didn’t eat, and only stared down at the little egg.

“Eat it. You need your strength,” insisted Murphy.

The prince frowned, tracing a finger along the jagged edge of his beech leaf. “To die?”

“It’d be embarrassing if you passed out before she could even try to kill you, wouldn’t it?”

That seemed to get through to the prideful prince. He ate.

Murphy leaned on his hands and through a gap in the hanging moss he watched the sun rise over the forest, its pale dandelion light finally leaking in over the tops of trees and warming the valley. When Bellamy was finished eating, which was quite soon, Murphy stood and brushed the soft dirt from his palms and rear, and then waved a hand toward the world. “It’s always better to be early.”

Bellamy was scared, and Murphy knew it. Pride thundered through him as Bellamy stood anyway, and walked out of the cave with his head held high. For all Murphy’s criticism and jokes, and for all the mistakes the prince had made, Bellamy was brave, and protective, and selfless. He was, at his core, a guardian of his people— just what Murphy believed a king ought to be. He just hoped he could make the prince believe it too.

“My father liked stories. Had this big, leaning pile of books that made our cottage look ridiculous. He read me a lot of poetry, and a bunch of legends,” said Murphy as they walked, pushing through branches and brush. Bellamy looked at him out of the corner of his eye like he was being strange, and Murphy supposed he was.

“He read me this legend once. It was about the very first king of Arkadia, who split the land into the thirteen kingdoms. Your however-many-greats grandfather. He got sick, and his dying wish was to be taken deep into the woods to thrust his sword into a stone in such a way that only a Blake would be able to draw it, should his lineage ever come into question. The legend says he died before he was able to do so, but the prophecy says it’s here in the Shallow Valley, and that only the One True King can pull it free.”

“I’m not in the mood for fairytales, Murphy.”

“Well, that’s going to make what’s on the other side of this rock a little awkward.”

Bellamy looked skeptically at Murphy one last time as the warlock rounded a mossy boulder, but followed after him nevertheless.

In a small clearing surrounded by towering trees sat a white stone. Protruding from that stone was the king’s sword, sunlight glinting boldly, ethereally, off of its golden hilt.

And circling the clearing was everybody Murphy—and a far-flying dragon who owed a debt— could muster up: the serving girls, the chieftains, every last druid in their camp, and then some. If Bellamy were familiar with cowardice, he might have shrank back at the sight of his knights, still resplendent in cobalt capes and chainmail if made a little ragged by their escape from the conquered kingdom.

Murphy turned a smile onto the stricken prince.

“I knew you liked torturing me, Murphy, but you’ve really outdone yourself this time.”

“I think you ought to try that sword, sire.”

Bellamy reached out and curled his fist in the front of Murphy’s tunic, jerking him close. Murphy kept a lazy smile on his face. He had long since gotten used to being manhandled so Bellamy could cope.

“In what may very well be my final hours on this earth, you want to humiliate me one last time in front of my people and yours. Why am I not surprised?”

Murphy reached up, nice and slow, and gently closed his hand around Bellamy’s fist. The prince’s angry stare flicked down to where they touched, and his shoulders sank, and when his eyes found Murphy’s again they were honest; trust, and fear.

He released Murphy’s tunic but kept his hand there, fiddling for a brief moment with the laces crossing Murphy’s chest like a worried child clinging to a parent’s clothes.

“Have a little faith,” whispered Murphy, keeping blue eyes linked to brown. The prince took a trembling breath. Then Bellamy tore himself away and approached the stone with his chin high as ever, balancing an invisible crown atop his head.

He never was much for speeches, and with his heart pounding so loudly that Murphy could hear it again, could feel it beating within his own chest like it was his and Bellamy’s and both of theirs, he took hold of the sword’s hilt.

The crowd watched with bated breath, and though Murphy could not see his face from where he stood opposite the crowd and behind the prince, he imagined Bellamy had closed his eyes and scrunched his brows and taken a great, deep breath.

Then the prince pulled, the muscles of his back rippling and his gloves squeaking desperately as he attempted to rip the sword from the stone with brute strength.

Murphy had seen him fight against the world tooth and nail and fist and sword. He had seen Bellamy shun reason and resort to violence, just as Murphy himself so often had. But Bellamy could not muscle himself into trusting that the throne belonged to him; that he was a decent man, a good prince, and a great king. He could not beat his self-doubt until it went quiet, nor could he cut it down with a blade. He could not tear his destiny from the earth, teeth bared and palms bleeding.

Murphy knew it better than anyone; he had to believe in something.

“I can’t,” whispered Bellamy, knowing only Murphy was close enough to hear him. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes you can,” urged Murphy. “You’re the only one. Would I lie to you?”

_“Yes,”_ Bellamy hissed, glaring sharply over his shoulder.

“Would I lie to you about something _nice?”_

Bellamy stood still, pondering that. Then he approached the stone again, and reached for the sword with his hand turned over. This time, he searched for no leverage, and stood tall. He turned his head slowly, looking out over the crowd that had gathered, silent and waiting in the trees.

His eyes roamed over Raven and Clarke and the other servants they’d rounded up; Lexa; Luna, Indra, and Anya; Lincoln and the rest of the druids; Sir Monty, Sir Jasper, Sir Finn, Sir Miller, Sir Atom, and Sir Monroe. Then he looked back over his shoulder one last time, meeting Murphy’s eyes. Murphy stared back, firm and surer about this than anything he had ever been sure of in his life, and Bellamy took a deep breath as his being seemed to finally, _finally_ shift into place.

He faced the sword, and pulled.

With a discreet, outward-facing palm, Murphy unsealed the sword from the stone. Steel glided through the rock like warm butter, melting on the prince’s forgotten platter the morning so many moons ago that Murphy intended to kill him.

Bellamy held the glinting sword aloft as the crowd cheered for him, chanting, _“Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live the king!”_

It didn’t matter that he had never been coronated. It didn’t matter that most of the legend was bullshit. The world had been waiting on their One True King, and everyone loved a good story.

Bellamy turned a calm, proud expression on Murphy, the king’s sword looking perfectly at home against his broad shoulder. Murphy hoped he wouldn’t get a big head over this. 

“What do you say we go get our kingdom back?” Bellamy asked.

And maybe Bellamy would die. Maybe they both would die. Maybe everyone would die, in a blazing supernova of magic and violence. Or maybe the prophecy would turn out to be true, and for once they wouldn’t all look stupid for believing in something beautiful.

Murphy’s magic stirred up an eager little dust devil around his feet, joyfully tossing fallen leaves. Bellamy smiled at the sight. 

“Suppose I got nothin’ better to do.”


	11. eleven

Murphy was not to use his magic in front of anyone.

Murphy was not to use his magic in front of strangers, or friends, or even when he was in the woods all alone, because he never knew who might be watching.

And most of all, Murphy was not to use his magic in the Arkadian square in the presence of the prince, the knights, and everyone else he had come to know, and especially not below the arched windows of Queen Aurora’s chambers, who stared unmoved at the second ragtag army storming what had once been her kingdom.

The red army tried to stop them— had been trying since Bellamy’s people first swarmed the gates and Murphy’s druids scaled the great walls by means of crawling vines and floating stones— but every brave witch and warlock who tried to stand in Murphy’s way was moved down by the flick of a wrist. Then, the stragglers were picked off by the well-trained band of soldiers and druids in his wake. It almost wasn’t fair, but then again, nothing in this world was fair.

It was her he was worried about. Octavia, who waited patiently inside the castle like they were coming round to borrow sugar.

They were flanked on either side by painted witches. Murphy batted the first away, sending her soaring backwards until her spine connected with a burnt beam in the upper town’s ruins and the building’s black skeleton crumbled, burying her beneath its ash. He deflected the other charging witch’s fireball, and with his sword Bellamy skewered her through the stomach.

He wrested the sword from her guts, flinging blood over the courtyard’s white stone. “I could have handled the fireball,” he said. Murphy rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to argue, but found Bellamy was smiling, impishly so, as he resumed his forward march.

“Funny,” muttered Murphy, watching the back of his head as the prince began to ascend the huge stone staircase, cast in the looming shadow of the conquered castle. His heart clenched.

Raven had lent chainmail and a back and breastplate from her shop, and Murphy had enlisted a druid weaver to dream up a new blue cape, Blake family crest and all, dragging regally behind Bellamy’s boot heels. He’d charmed them all to the teeth, too. Down to the ends of his curls, the prince should have been impervious to every curse and injury Murphy’s fretting mind could fathom up.

But Murphy had always been careful, and the world still had its wicked way with him.

He put on a brave face for Bellamy’s sake, who was still convinced he was more likely to die inside those white walls than walk out with his crown. And after all, that was Murphy’s job— to be the strength, the defender, the shield.

Once at the top of the stairs they stood before the great doors, the witch guards lying dead around their feet, and stared at the intricate patterns of wrought iron creeping across the wood like the castle’s own gnarled hands. Bellamy swallowed, tightening his grip on his sword.

Murphy leaned into his line of sight and raised a brow. “Shall I open them for you, sire?”

Bellamy huffed, his metal-plated shoulders dropping for a moment to shove Murphy and send him careening off to the side. Without waiting for the warlock to recover, he pushed the doors in.

They expected to be descended upon at once by a sea of red sorcerers, and though the knights drew their swords and the druids raised their hands, all facing every splitting end of the castle’s halls, no one came. In fact, the castle was eerily quiet.

“Stay together,” ordered Bellamy, advancing toward the central staircase. Murphy heard the instructions reverberate through his mind a thousand times as the druids communicated with those at the back of their ranks, still spilling out into the courtyard.

On the second landing, Bellamy readied himself at the throne room doors. The prince’s jaw shifted tightly beneath his skin and his gloves creased around the hilt of his sword. He raised a hand to the rightmost door, and Murphy followed, placing his bare palm against the cool wood of the other. Bellamy caught his eye, and Murphy nodded. “I got you.”

Bellamy didn’t laugh this time. He’d seen what Murphy could do. How much he’d sacrificed. And he knew that if he couldn’t put his sister down, Murphy would.

Inside, sunlight pierced through the stained glass windows and shone red and gold in the nearly-empty room, dappled along the floors like falling autumn leaves. Three thrones sat upon the dais but only one was occupied.

Long hair obscured her face as she sat with her head bowed, drumming her fingers on the queen’s black armrests. For a long time, she did not speak. Then she slowly raised her head, her forehead still painted red with drying blood like a perverted crown of her own design, and met the prince’s eyes.

“Hey, big brother.”

Though they had seen her in the scrying crystal, Bellamy was stricken. The point of his sword had scratched the floorboard beneath it and he barely still held it. Every hard, brave angle of him had eroded and slumped at the sight of her, despairing.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, O,” he croaked.

Octavia adjusted her vambraces, unmoved. “You gave me no choice.”

Then she turned over a palm, and the day Murphy had been dreading finally came.

Bellamy was yanked up to the high beams like a rag doll. The east door and the servant’s passage broke open, flooding the throne room with red witches. Bellamy’s armor clashed against the ceiling and then he was falling like an anvil, hurtling toward the ground. A witch cast a murder of crows upon him, and with one hand Murphy broke their frail necks in the air and with the other he caught Bellamy, his freckled nose a gnat’s wing from the floor.

Octavia stood, slow-clapping as the violence raged on around them. Murphy watched her descend the dais, all the while gently righting Bellamy until he could get his knees beneath him and reclaim his sword.

“Murphy, Murphy, Murphy,” she tutted, looking him over. “You had us all fooled. Me, especially. Playing the silly little serving boy while your people suffered and died at his hands. While _I_ suffered.”

The warlock’s eyes roamed over her tattered gown and her bloodied armor, the shadows that still hung beneath her eyes. He could almost see her in there. Hurt. Betrayed.

“I thought you were my friend,” she said quietly, looking at his leather belt with the dagger scabbard and the herb pouch, the one she’d gifted him that summer so long ago, and yet not so long at all.

“I’m trying to put an end to the cycle. The war, the bloodshed,” said Murphy, his stomach turning with guilt nonetheless. “I thought you believed in peace too, _Red Queen.”_

Her lip curled, and she cast an acrid look at Bellamy as he rose up from the floor, turning his sword on her. “Like I said, he gave me no choice. This is me putting an end to it.”

Murphy searched her emerald eyes, looking again for any trace of the gentle, hidden princess who spoke her mind and cherished her friends and loved to dance. Hate gleamed back. 

“I don’t wanna kill you,” whispered Murphy.

“You? Kill me?” Octavia smiled, baring her teeth like a wolf. “I guess everybody loves an underdog.”

Murphy thought to say something funny about how she had no idea what kind of dog he was. Then again, he didn’t feel very funny.

His hand shot out just as hers did. Octavia scrambled back as the floorboards came to life and wrenched from the ground, gnawing at her feet as she crawled from them. Every press of her hands to the floor spilled another wave of what smelled like seawater, and made the boards warp and twist away like unhappy snakes.

Whatever she had cast hadn’t affected Murphy. Then he realized she wasn’t after him, and that Bellamy was no longer standing by his side.

He wouldn’t have recognized him if not for those polished black boots, entombed as he was by crimson butterflies. They crawled over him, fluttering madly as if he were drenched in the sweetest nectar they had ever tasted. He crushed several as he fell to his knees, clawing at his face and throat.

Murphy shouted his name and ran after him, ducking through a barrage of flying spells and swinging blades as he crossed the battlefield. Druids and knights and witches and warlocks were locked in fierce struggle, bodies hitting the floor one after another. Murphy couldn’t protect them. He could only look after the one and not feel guilty over it, for everyone who had stormed the castle at his back would have sworn him to do so.

By the time Murphy got to him, butterflies were gradually forcing their way into Bellamy’s mouth, nose, and ears. Velvet wings were folded and broken beneath his armor, each insect desperate to get closer to the heart of him. He choked as Murphy plucked them from his lips and tongue, and gagged as Murphy plunged his fingers into Bellamy’s mouth and tore them out by their wings. Bellamy’s mouth snapped shut, but the insects were still killing themselves to find their way inside him.

“Sorry,” said Murphy, and found Bellamy’s hand. Two fingers to Bellamy’s knuckles, he sent frost racing across the prince’s skin and the butterflies stilled, then fell off stunned or dead. They scattered in a rose petal ring around him, some still pitifully twitching.

Bellamy had only just opened his eyes, disoriented and trembling from the cold, when Octavia regained her bearings and descended upon them again.

Her sleeves and vambraces dripped with water, and the already ragged end of her gown was torn to shreds. She leveled him with a look that was both feral and unamused. “You’re starting to annoy me, Murphy.”

“Would you believe me if I said I got that a lot?”

She smiled that awful smile again, and with it caught Murphy off guard enough to strike first. One moment he was on his feet, and the next a gust of wind had punched him through the stained glass window.

It was sunny and blue outside, and shards of colored glass rained down around him as he fell. The breath had gone from him, and he waited for it to return as the training yard came up slowly to meet him. From the jagged hole in the window above Bellamy was reaching out to him, his mouth open in a silent cry.

A funny sort of smile found its way onto Murphy’s face. Bellamy really did care.

Beneath the warlock formed a deer of cloud, and time found its bearings again. He gripped its white antlers, the clouds soft and wet but solid enough in his hands, ducking his head as the glass shards shot down and stuck into the ground not far now from the buck’s hooves. It bounded delicately toward the window, and Bellamy stared not at it but at a wind-swept Murphy, his brown eyes desperately wide and his mouth stealing air.

“I don’t tend to die,” explained Murphy. Then he took a stunned Bellamy’s hand and drew himself into the throne room.

Octavia faced the broken window, and Murphy’s feet had hardly touched the floor before she let out a frustrated scream, assailing them with spells. Murphy threw up a shield and yanked them both beneath the barrage of curses.

_“Cowards!”_ screamed Octavia as she furiously cast. “Both of you, _cowards!”_

Some of her spells sliced into the wall or burst open with monstrous creatures, lost, and some dissipated, creeping along the floor like smoke until they found a warm body to cling to. Druids and witches and warlocks all fell wounded and dead around her, unable to defend themselves against the wild curses creeping up their ankles and stabbing them in the backs.

“Look around, Octavia!” Bellamy cried. “You’re killing your own people!”

The witch fell silent a moment and the curses stopped coming, and all Murphy knew of her then was the pulsing sound of her heavy breaths, and her dark eyes darting all around. She took in the sea of corpses and blood, and at last, she hissed, “The ends justify the means. Isn’t that right, boys?”

“And what exactly are the ends?” snapped Murphy. “You crown yourself queen, conquer the world, run it into the ground?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far,” Octavia snarled. “I thought, first, I’d find everything my so-called family holds dear, and I’d take it away. Erase them from history like they wanted to do to me, to magic. My mother’s got nothing left but that damn chair, and my brother, well…” Octavia’s eyes flicked from Bellamy to Murphy. “All he’s got is you.”

The shield shattered. She ripped Bellamy away and flung Murphy to the other side of the room. His back collided with the seat of a wooden pew. He crumpled on the floor beside it, squeezing his eyes closed. Fiery pain shot along his side and raged in the back of his head, and then…

Then he was sinking.

His right side had been swallowed by a puddle of what might have been quicksand but wasn’t quite right, made up of strange orbs that seemed to roil, alive, looking to take more of him under. His right leg and the beginnings of his arm were buried. When he tried to use his left foot to get some leverage on the floor and push his way out, the orbs seemed to find him by movement, and quickly overtook his other leg. 

He could not panic. Could not thrash his way out. He had used up Indra’s strength, but Luna had taught him inner peace, patience. She’d done it via all but psychological torture, siccing the pixies upon him, and he thought he ought to make use of it.

Murphy manifested a rope and anvil and tied them together by eyes only, but had nothing to grab the rope with as the orbs took his elbow and then his forearm, folding over the fingers of his remaining hand. The rope grabbed him instead, coiling itself around his torso. It didn’t much matter when he still couldn’t pull himself out, and the rope, though empathetic to his cause, didn’t have the mind to do it itself.

He couldn’t undo the sinking beads like he’d undone the cold iron, not when he didn’t know where the rest of his body had gone.

He didn’t know how to get out of this.

Murphy looked up in terror. The war raged on without him. Druids and knights fought witches and warlocks. Clarke and Raven were still alive, standing back to back and fending off red witches by mace and sword. Lexa was between forms, tearing at a witch with her fangs and piking another with her tail. He didn’t know what to make of Sir Jasper, who lied facedown beneath a pew, his body twisted at odd angles. Luna was down too, and so was Sir Finn, and Sir Monroe. He couldn’t find Octavia. He couldn’t find Bellamy. And nobody could stop to find him.

He wasn’t sure they would hear him scream. He wasn’t sure they could afford to look his way. By the time he felt desperate and terrified enough to try, the strange beads had crawled across his mouth, gently quieting him. They crept up until they covered his ears and made shifting hands in his hair, pushing his head down, down, down. Then they pulled him the rest of the way under.

Beneath the floor, it was dark and it was cold. He couldn’t feel his body. Murphy held his breath, and thought of being underwater. He thought of Gaia, the Lady of the Lake, holding his head between her gentle hands as she took him beneath the surface. He sat with that calmness long enough to make a decision.

Die, which he’d just boasted about not tending to do and would no doubt feel terribly embarrassed about if he did, or do again as he’d been taught.

He spared a moment to regret fighting Anya on their lessons that he’d thought useless, recalling the day they buried themselves alive in the woods. The day Anya taught him to shut down his body, past even what the queen had survived on, and preserve it with magic until he was scarcely more than a soul trapped in a box.

Maybe they’d find him again, or maybe he’d live under the floor forever. A secret, a ghost, like Octavia. Maybe that’s exactly what she wanted; for someone to understand. To die feeling what she felt.

Murphy’s head began to pound, aching for breath. He cast the preservation spell, though wherever he was was so dark that the charm let off no light, and if not for his magic trembling in his burning chest he would not have known it had worked. His trembling magic that settled down when it was time, flattening into a thin golden line across his heart, thumping softly with the last of them.

Then Murphy closed his eyes, and lay himself to rest.

☆☆☆

He didn’t dream.

When he woke again he’d think he heard a heartbeat.

He’d know his own should not have been beating. 

He’d think he knew whose heart it was.

The thought would make him laugh.

_Of the same stardust. Fuck that._

☆☆☆

When Murphy woke up, the battle was over.

They dug him out with spades and spells, and hands pulled him into the light. He crawled out of their grasp, dragging himself across the floor, away from the pool of dark. He coughed up beads.

For a long time he couldn’t think, and lay with his cheek against the cool floor. He shook all over, his heart pounding in his chest, and his other heart pounding too. Slower, ever slower. He had to find Bellamy.

Murphy got his hands and knees under him and raised himself up, staring briefly at the blood on his palms. He’d crawled into the middle of it all, corpses and gore and broken butterfly wings.

All the red witches were dead. Most of the druids were, too. His friends, some of them at least, stood over him. Shadows pulled at their faces, and though he couldn’t have been under for long, they all looked so much older than he remembered.

“Where’s Octavia?” he croaked.

He was met with weary silence, and so Murphy rose to his feet and stumbled his way through the graveyard, blackness still creeping at the edges of his mind.

“Wait, Murphy. I’ll come with you,” called Clarke, making to follow. Her arms were bloodied up to the elbow, her mace dangling at her side. Murphy felt wracked with guilt. Was it his fault they’d all had to bear this?

His friend took one step and grew faint, tilting forward. Lexa caught her with gentle hands, retracting her claws as Clarke dropped her weapon and sank into her, exhausted.

“Don’t worry,” said Murphy, offering the survivors a trodden smile, all he could muster. “I’ll finish this.”

“If you’re gone long we’re coming after you,” Anya announced in a voice like it was any old day, despite looking to be weaving their intestines back into place.

“I’ll be back in time for supper,” swore Murphy, putting on a cocky grin until he’d made it out of the throne room and into the east hall, where it crumbled apart.

He didn’t have time to think about the faces he’d seen in the blood. He didn’t have time to think about the faces he hadn’t. He didn’t have time to think about the darkness, his soul in a box, being for all purposes dead and still hearing the prince’s heart. He just had to get to him.

The stone staircase was cold on his hands and knees the few times he fell, but he kept climbing, watching the tops of trees vanish from sight in the windows.

The queen’s chambers were unguarded. Every witch and warlock in the kingdom had abandoned their posts to join the fight, and as such were dead now and not coming back.

Murphy tried to be like Bellamy and walk toward them with his chin high, like he was balancing a crown atop his head. By the time he was stood in front of the doors, his shoulders were hunched again.

Voices whispered through the wood.

“This is no way to live,” tutted Octavia. “She’d be better off dead. Then you and I could really duke it out for the crown.”

“Don’t… touch… her,” Bellamy wheezed, his gruff voice little more now than a death rattle.

“Always such a mama’s boy,” she sighed. “For what it’s worth, I do regret leaving her to suffer. That assassin was mine, I’m sure you guessed. I was told he never missed a mark. Guess mother dearest could make any sorcerer’s skin crawl. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know how she treated me.”

“She… loved… you.”

“Shut up,” snapped Octavia, though her voice trembled. “You’ll say anything to try and get yourself out of this, won’t you? Everyone saw it. She was ashamed of me. Willing to let me suffer to protect her reputation. She would have killed me, if she knew what I was. That isn’t love.”

“She… wanted to…protect… you.” Bellamy coughed something terrible, wet and thick as if he were drowning.

“Enough!” she shouted. “You are at _my_ mercy! You should be begging for my forgiveness, not lying right to my face!”

Bellamy’s voice was so quiet that Murphy could scarcely hear it, but he pressed on, the brave, earnest idiot he was. “She wanted to protect you… from their rumors… and their judgment. She wanted to protect us… from the magic… that killed my father.”

The castle seemed to tremble as Octavia’s rage and sadness grew. “She murdered _thousands_ of innocent people! Maybe you can bear that, but I can’t!”

“She was wrong… but she always… loved you.”

Octavia fell silent, and Murphy wasn’t so sure they were only talking about Queen Aurora anymore.

He hated to intrude on family business, but Octavia no longer seemed to him the reasonable sort, and Bellamy needed help. Murphy could feel it— lightning gripping his veins, pulling him against the doors. He rested his forehead against them a moment, swearing softly. Then, at last, he entered.

In her chair sat the queen, staring out over the kingdom. Octavia stood at the end of the queen’s bed, white-knuckling the end board with her head bowed. And on the bed lay Bellamy, dying.

“You just won’t give up, will you?” murmured Octavia, never looking up from the end board.

“I could say the same for you,” replied Murphy, eyes switching between the witch and Bellamy. 

The prince hadn’t acknowledged him. He stared at the bed canopy, the bones of his chest drumming against muscle with his every ragged breath.

Octavia tilted her head toward him, a green eye glaring out from a slit in the black slash of her hair. As if moving one section of her body at a time, like a reanimated skeleton, she peeled herself from the bed and teetered toward him.

Murphy spied gashes, knitted clumsily together by thorns, in all the places on her body that wouldn’t have killed her to be cut, and only there. Bellamy had tried to slow her down, but couldn’t bear to kill her. Now, he was dying for it.

“What makes _you_ so special? Huh?” Octavia snarled, her eyes heavy. She was wounded and tired and bordering on delirious, but still Murphy did not let his guard down, ever flexing his fingers at his side.

“I can juggle a little bit,” he said.

Octavia laughed nastily, shaking her head in disdain. “Yeah, I thought you might say something like that. You think you’re funny, Murphy?”

Murphy shrugged.

“Tell me, Murphy, is this funny?”

She lashed out then, slicing madly at his face and chest with an invisible blade, no more than sharpened air. He ducked and dodged, but his tunic shredded straight across. Shallow slashes appeared across his chest and stomach and arms, stinging something awful.

“Laugh, Murphy!” Octavia roared, prowling toward him, her hands cutting madly through the air. _“Laugh!”_

His back hit the bedroom door as he stumbled, aching as if he’d been clawed across the face. He touched the skin beneath his eye and blood clung to his fingers, rolling into the lines of his palm. He looked at Octavia as she stood before him, her fingers stilled to the right of his throat, waiting to swing her nowhere blade across it.

He could see that Octavia knew there was no getting out of this, now. She knew he could kill her, and that he would not go down without a fight. But she’d killed her mother in every way that mattered, and her brother was not long for this world. She’d already won. Her dying wish, it seemed, was to take Murphy down with her.

“What happened to you?” he asked. Octavia’s jaw ticked.

“I saw the world for what it was. An evil place for evil things, where all there is to do about it is burn the piece of shit to the ground and start over. My people— sorcerers who had seen their share of the greed and lies and violence this world and all its little kingdoms have to offer— they understood that. If you were smart, you’d understand it too. You’d know that was the only way to end the cycle. You’d want it all gone.”

A rueful sort of smile took to Murphy’s lips. “You’re wrong.”

Their hands flexed at once.

He ducked beneath the first swing of her blade, and though Murphy's magic wrenched her back she swung again and struck him, slicing him across both raised arms. He pushed her, and her back and skull struck the bedpost. She made a swing at him again and cut him once more across the face, carving a crescent through the jagged lines she'd clawed in him. Murphy grit his teeth as he charged her, hot blood leaking onto his lip and tongue. She juked him, but she was slowing down. He followed, turning to slam her face-first against the chamber doors.

"It's over, Octavia!" he yelled as she struggled against him, trying to free her wrists from the circle of his hand. "It's over."

She bared her teeth in a wicked smile as he pinned her face against the wood, but tears sped down her cheeks. "Guess friends aren't allowed to disagree these days," she joked, though it came out as a whimper. 

In the blink that Murphy lifted his hand from her face to gather her wrists, Octavia threw her head back and slammed it against his nose. He stumbled back, moaning, and she pinned him against the bedpost with an arm across his throat, her hand raised to curse him.

Murphy did all he could think to do.

Her eyes went wide, and she looked between them. Protruding from her stomach was the simple handle of a practical dagger, the one that sat just right in the scabbard of his belt. The dagger she'd given him the summer day they danced beneath blue banners.

He said nothing as she looked up at him again, her eyes frantic with betrayal.

Then the vines that had been steadily creeping into queen’s chambers from a trellis beneath her great arched windows took the witch’s hands, and then her ankles, and coiled up her legs and around her waist like she was a doll in its fist.

Octavia came to life again and thrashed in its grip, arching back with a furious, rasping scream as the vines wound around her neck, each shivering tendril of it dragging her down to the floor and toward the window. She bared her teeth as a vine crawled across her lips and filled her mouth with ivy, quieting her ragged shouts.

Soon the vines had drawn her away from Murphy until her back was against the queen’s armchair, so heavy and regal that it did little more than sound a soft ‘oomf’ each time the witch slammed her head against it, fighting ferociously.

Tears sped from Octavia’s wild eyes, her black hair plastered to her cheeks and lips as she flung her head around. Murphy couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, like he felt sorry for the hydra that died on the black rocks of the western shore.

The blood loss caught up to her. The hurt. The exhaustion. Octavia hung her head and went still, cradled in vines at her mother’s back like a child swaddled.

She wasn’t a monster. She was a creature of magic and a miserable person, just like him. Only the world had pushed her to her limit and she hadn’t found a prophecy to believe in. She’d had to make her own. Kill the mother, kill the brother, set magic free and retake the world.  How could he hate her, when he’d once thought the same?

The only difference was that she refused to give it up. That she’d all but succeeded. That she’d killed them.

_“Bellamy.”_

Murphy rushed to Bellamy’s side, who had long since gone quiet. His veins were spidery and black with the most hateful curse Murphy had ever seen.

“Bellamy. Bell,” he begged, hands hovering all over him before he decided to pat Bellamy’s wan cheek. “Hey, look at me.”

For a terrifying moment, he thought Bellamy might not wake up. Then the prince opened his eyes, and found Murphy’s. The whites of them were ringed with blood. His nose and lips were flaked with red, too, and a slow trickle of it ran from his ear and curved to the pillow beneath.

He opened his mouth to speak, and his exhausted expression twisted with pain. A cough tore up his throat and he choked, blood spilling from his lips like a well of it had collected in his mouth. Murphy hurriedly turned him on his side, watching in horror as it poured from him like red wine.

“A bloodletting curse,” said Indra’s voice. Murphy whipped his head toward the door where his friends had gathered, come to rescue him. Though it was not Murphy in need of saving. It never was.

“How do I break it?”

“It’s already done too much damage. He’ll need healing.”

Murphy stared wide-eyed over his shoulder. “So someone _heal him!”_

“It’s too powerful a curse, too full of hate. He’s nearly dead,” rasped Luna, clutching her lacerated throat. “You were the only match for the red witch then, and you’re the only match for her now. It has to be you.”

He looked at Bellamy, smoothing sweat-soaked curls from his temple as the prince trembled. “But, I can’t heal.”

“I told you once, I think there may still be a way for you to learn,” Lexa said quietly, approaching on featherlight feet until she was stood at his back.

“How?” Murphy whispered, brushing Bellamy’s cheekbone with his thumb and half-hoping she wouldn’t say it.

Lexa touched his shoulder before the blow landed. “You know how.”

Murphy was still and silent a moment. Bellamy’s breath rattled out of him like his throat was a maze of thorns. Murphy closed his eyes and nodded his head. Of course. Of course he would do it for Bellamy. He’d do whatever it took.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered, stroking Bellamy’s pale face. The prince seemed to hear his promise, looking up at Murphy with faraway eyes. Then he smiled, and a red tear rolled from his squinting eyes, soaking into a rose on the brocade bedclothes. Somehow, Murphy knew Bellamy was making fun of him.


	12. twelve

A water sprite had followed them.

It would take Murphy quite a few jumps to cross the leagues he needed to cross, and between appearing he had to let his magic wind itself up again and let Bellamy settle, whose dying body seemed to reject everything, but especially rejected being flung through time and space.

And a water sprite had followed them, and after his third leap across the land, Murphy sat in the shelter of a ledge beneath a weeping fig tree’s roots, watching her tiptoe along low-hanging branches and gather last night’s raindrops in her arms.

Bellamy lay beside him, eyes closed, his deep, shuddering breaths turning the soft dirt.

As the sprite worked, Murphy thought of anyplace but where he was going. He wondered about the kingdom. Were all his friends alive? Who had taken charge in Bellamy’s absence? Could they have saved Octavia? Would they? What would become of her if they did?

His racing mind slowed as the sprite walked to the edge of a wiry branch and hopped onto Murphy’s knee. Without paying him a lick of attention, she fluttered onto his other knee and then jumped to the ground. Tiny as an insect in the dirt, she approached Bellamy’s sleeping face. She began, one at a time, bringing her droplets to his skin, washing away the blood.

Murphy ached, watching the sprite’s small, translucent hands gently wipe the blood from the bow of the prince’s lips. Even after everything he’d done, magic loved Bellamy Blake.

When she was out of orbs the sprite tapped her little foot, staring unsatisfied at Bellamy’s eyelashes, thick and flaky with dried blood. She flitted onto Murphy’s shoulder, and stoically collected the teardrops from his cheek.

“You’re all business, huh?” sniffed Murphy, wiping at his face as he realized he was crying. The sprite did not reply, tending then to each of Bellamy’s individual eyelashes.

Murphy looked out across the forest, where fog laid low and lazy over the land, shielding them from the world. When he looked up, he noticed the tree above him was bowing strangely and a cluster of orange figs was dangling just by Murphy’s head, as if the tree was bending over to offer its fruit. In fact, the dirt beneath them was remarkably soft and loose like the small hillside had eroded just before they’d appeared, perhaps to make a place for them to rest.

It was a curse that the earth and its magic bent and broke them to achieve its own ends. It was also a blessing that they were chosen by it. Loved by it. Someone had to suffer the wounds and come out the other side to save it, and who better than Murphy and Bellamy, the two most stubborn bastards to ever tread its soil. At least, he hoped.

“If you die on me after all this, I’ll kill you,” said Murphy, taking Bellamy’s limp hand in his, knuckles making small craters in the earth. “Seriously. I won’t forgive you this time.”

Bellamy was silent, his breath still gently stirring the dirt. Murphy thought he must have imagined the way Bellamy’s hand seemed to tighten, for the briefest flutter of a sprite’s wings, around his.

☆☆☆

Murphy could only appear in places he could imagine; places he’d been before.

He would never have chosen to land where they landed next, but then again, he could count his number of happy places on one hand.

The lake was still and gray under a fog bank, the cattails swaying at its edges. The Lady of the Lake stood in her translucent white gown in chest-deep water, watching him drag Bellamy down to her shore.

“Hello,” she said, leisurely dragging the tips of her fingers over the water’s surface. There must have been so many bones at her feet.

Murphy grunted, and dropped Bellamy onto the shore with his hand between the prince’s skull and the dirt, as he fell beside him on his knees.

“You bring the king?” surmised the spirit, leaning forward curiously from her spot in the lake, from which Murphy had never seen her move after she emerged. Her dark locs dripped as they spilled over her shoulder, scattering rain. “That is disappointing.”

“I do _not_ bring the king,” snapped Murphy, holding out a hand as he caught his breath, stopping her from getting any more curious. “Not yet.”

“I will take him. The spirit world will welcome him kindly,” pressed Gaia, turning a palm to him.

_“He’s not dead!”_ Murphy shouted, lifting Bellamy’s head to his stuttering chest. “You can’t have him!”

Gaia slowly lowered her hand to the water again, humming a soft tune as her fingers danced across ripples. Murphy stared at her, wild-eyed.

“You can’t have him,” he repeated, curling his hand tight around Bellamy’s shoulder. Gaia’s eyes fell to his scabbard.

“Give the terrible sword to me.”

“Why should I?”

“Whether he lives or dies, he won’t need that. And no one else should ever have it. I will keep it safe. I’m excellent at keeping things safe.”

Murphy side-eyed her, considering. He supposed if he ever wanted it back, well, he was Murchadh, damn it.

He lay Bellamy down, and carefully unsheathed the sword, born of lies, bathed in dragon’s breath and witch’s blood. Terrible sword indeed.

He took the sword to the edge of the water, and kneeled to lay it in the shallows. Minnows and tadpoles flit from the blade, and the water clouded with dirt disturbed by the toes of his boots. He stared into Gaia’s eyes as a small, rippling wave overtook the sword, and she carried it to herself across the lake’s surface like a lily pad on a string.

Though it was no soul, she seemed pleased to have another treasure for safekeeping. She pressed the sword’s hilt to her narrow chest and stared up at the towering blade, beads of her water licking down its burnished steel. Her earthen eyes met his again on either side of the blade.

“Sad little sorcerer,” sang Gaia, “I hope to never see you again.”

It was actually quite kind, when he thought about it. Murphy hiccuped a laugh. “I hope to never see you again too, Gaia.”

The spirit submerged, her white dress billowing up against her floating locs, making her look like a strange lotus on the water. Then she and the sword went under entirely, and the world was quiet again.

As he gathered Bellamy to his chest and prepared to leave, he felt like he’d lain something to rest after all. The sword, and the war that forced him to bring it to life and forced Bellamy to use it, was gone beneath the lake.

☆☆☆

They appeared again, this time in a neck of the woods that made Murphy’s frantic heart skid to a stop.

The clearing was dusted with spots of sunlight here and there, tumbling through the clouds and fog, falling over the grass like golden leaves. The blood was long since washed away by rain, but the place where they lay remained. The grass they had flattened stood up again, and small daisies bloomed there.

Murphy blinked. “Let’s get you settled big guy,” he said to Bellamy, hefting the prince up against his chest and turning to drag him toward the tuft of grass. Bellamy’s armor clanked and the shoulder of it beat up against Murphy’s chin with each of its shifts, clacking his teeth together. The prince’s boot heels drew pale lines in the grass as Murphy heaved him forward.

“I wish you’d wake up. You’re heavier than you look,” said Murphy, collapsing in the grass and softening Bellamy’s fall, huffing as he was squashed under a heap of steel and man. He squirmed out from under Bellamy and carefully lay his head against the ground, but his ill-fitting backplate was biting into the back of his neck.

Bellamy was somewhat responsive as Murphy kneeled over him, unlatching the side hinges of his breastplate and backplate. Meaning he lolled his head a bit and moaned, and his bleeding eyes fluttered.

Murphy worked gingerly but efficiently, and when he undid the last hinge on Bellamy’s shoulder and Bellamy’s ragged breath puffed softly over his hands, he spared himself a moment to be miserable.

With trembling fingers, he touched Bellamy’s cheek. He was cold and pallid, and Murphy hated himself for never learning to heal. All his power and preparation had amounted to nothing, here and now. It was because of Murphy’s stupidness, his stubbornness, that Bellamy still lay dying.

Blood trickled from Bellamy’s nose, and with the sleeve of his tunic Murphy gently wiped it away. 

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” he whispered.

Bellamy was silent as Murphy turned him onto his side and peeled the armor from his chest, cracking his metal shell open, and abandoned the plates in the bushes. Murphy laid his hand over Bellamy’s heart, pumping hard beneath his cold chainmail. He tried to dig the tips of his fingers through the holes in the chainmail to touch Bellamy’s chest, to feel the silk of his stupid, fancy little tunic.

Though the armor shouldn’t have impeded his breathing, Bellamy inhaled deeply and hungrily with it off, chasing something.

Murphy drew his hand away and lay down next to him, staring up at the clouds. 

“I guess I never told you about my friend Mbege. He liked the sky. Liked it when I made creatures in the clouds, and didn’t care if it’d get us killed,” said Murphy. “He was an idiot. But I loved him.”

With a twitch of the warlock’s fingers, the clouds came together to make a great, white hydra, each of its wild heads swaying to and fro, ocean foam spilling up around it. Murphy turned his head.

Bellamy’s eyes were open. They were tight with hurt, and smears of blood painted the waning black moons beneath them— but they were open.

☆☆☆

The landscape wasn’t drastically different here, but it was somewhere new, and somewhere old just the same. Less forests and rock and moss, more plains and hills and dry, yellow grass. Summers were hot down here, dotted with fireflies and thunderstorms. But not so hot that it should’ve looked like this.

Murphy didn’t put a lightening charm on Bellamy. He wanted to save all his magic. Where the edge of the Arkadian forests petered away and the ground sloped steadily upward, Murphy hooked his wrists beneath the prince’s armpits and dragged him, walking backwards.

He saw the sun going down, slathering the sky in dull blues and pale tangerine. He saw dry grass fade to blackened, scarred earth beneath them, the edges of Bellamy’s boot buckles drawing long lines in the dead soil. 

For a long time walking, that was all there was. Dying sun and dead earth, the prince’s head against his ribs, and Murphy’s fists clenched white on either side of his quieting heart.

Then he heard the sound; the storming, columnar wind of it. The searching howl of a beast left somewhere it did not belong.

And then he saw the light. Emerald light, glaring off of the black earth, the stones and debris.

Murphy lowered Bellamy to the ground and watched the green haze spill over his skin, looking, but not touching.

“A fine mess you made here.”

Murphy turned slowly toward the veil, and slumped his shoulders as he met her eyes again, just as they were five winters ago. The veil spun slightly above the black debris of his home, and she loomed over him. Behind her, he could just barely glimpse into the spirit world, and watch the souls stretch by.

The spirit lowered her cloak’s hood, and jade clung to her ringlet hair, and she looked just like a girl the way Murphy looked just like a boy. But they were both much more, standing on either side of a hole in the universe.

“I’ve never known any mere man that could tear his way into my world. It’s quite an anomaly,” she said, glancing back inside her storm as the whispering, golden streaks of light ghosted endlessly past. “I never properly introduced myself. You were so sad, then. I’m the Cailleach, but the souls call me Callie.”

The souls hissed by and by, more like fish in a pond than people. Some leapt out at Murphy like a whip as if to rejoin the world, but Callie’s arm shot out and blocked them from escaping. She seemed eerily calm about all of it.

“I was waiting for you to come back and take care of this.”

Murphy thumbed his nose, trying to meet her eyes that made him feel like a child again, sooty and terrified. “Sorry,” he croaked. "Got tied up.”

“Don’t be,” she said kindly, dipping her head to smile at him. “I haven’t lost anyone. I’m a very good gatekeeper.”

Her eyes then flicked to Bellamy, his body rattling brokenly with every breath. Bellamy’s chest billowed and caved, and blood trickled slowly from his ears again. It was a wonder he had any left. Worst of all, Murphy could hear his heartbeat slowing in Murphy’s own chest.

It seemed there were many keepers in this world, and Murphy thought it no surprise that he was the worst of them.

He looked up at the gatekeeper, and said something he never thought he’d say.

“I need help.”

Callie gazed at him, her eyes ringed with that viridescent light. “You broke my heart, little boy,” she said quietly. “You were just a child. Barely sprouted from the earth.”

“Please,” said Murphy. “I’ll do anything, I just need—”

“I really don’t do favors,” said the gatekeeper, turning toward her golden souls.  
  
Tears sprang to his eyes. “I’m _begging_ you, please,” he implored, his voice breaking. More scared than he’d ever been in his life, the truth tore from Murphy, ragged and raw. "I love him.”

The Cailleach only smiled at that, peering at his face, before she raised her hood again.

“Wait,” Murphy pleaded, reaching up for her cloak. His fingers passed right through the dark cloth, and she slipped away from him.

His window into the spirit world shrank until it was gone, leaving only the rushing whirlwind of light roaring past his face. He stared, mouth agape, eyes desperately searching the storm for stretching souls. But they were all hidden from him.

He bent over, palm against the dark earth, and folded onto his knees. With his fists pushing stars into the sockets of his eyes, and his head heavy on Bellamy’s slowing chest, Murphy cried out. His anguish snaked all across the burned land, and blackbirds would have flown from him had there been any for miles.

Every few breaths, Bellamy’s heart thumped in Murphy’s ear. Less and less, until Murphy wasn’t sure when the next would come. If it would come.

“I’m sorry,” Murphy wept, wetting his cold chainmail with tears. “I tried.”

He searched blindly for Bellamy’s hand, and wound their fingers together upon the ash. 

Bellamy had been betrayed by everyone he cared for. He had lived so much of his life giving his all, to everyone, even those he did not know. If Murphy had his say, his friend would die knowing he was loved by someone.

They lay tangled together in that dead field on that black hill until the prince’s breaths slowed, and his heart finally went still, and half of Murphy was missing again.

“Darling,” said a voice from a thousand years ago, and yesterday. “Murphy, darling. Can you look up?”

Murphy raised his head, eyes raw, his skin splotched with red roses. How long he had been weeping he didn’t know, but he was not shocked to find that he’d lost his mind at the end of it.

“What,” he said blandly, glaring out at the horizon, where night was beginning to claw at the dying day.

Another torturous old voice spoke. “Never much liked you when you were grouchy.”

“You’re not real,” muttered Murphy, lowering his head back to Bellamy’s chest. The voice laughed, gravelly and nasal.

“You came all the way home to find us, and now that you’ve got us, you’re ignoring us. That’s my son.”

It took Murphy a moment to gather his bearings. He was on the cottage hill, easternmost edge of the Kingdom of Light. He was beneath the veil, the one he’d torn himself. He’d come all the way here to save Bellamy, and Bellamy was dead.

He’d come looking for his parents, and they were here.

He looked up. Her dark hair was razor sharp, cast in gemstone light, and her lips were curved in a fierce little smile like she might have jumped out and grabbed him, if she could’ve. His brown eyes were hooded and warm, hearths over a bushy beard, and his nose was sharp as a cliffside.

Murphy’s shoulders fell. “Mom? Dad?”

A tear fell jaggedly from her eye, wiped away by the fierce winds of the veil, before his mother pushed her way in front of his father and came as close as she could, unwilling to step through. She shimmered gold around her edges, and it was then that Murphy realized they didn’t look like anything anymore. The Cailleach had spelled their souls into mirages of their bodies, just so he could see them again.

His mother spoke in a hurry, demanding, like she did when the knights came round and Murphy was casting charms in the yard, or when she needed something off of the stove before it burned. He shook his head, trying to listen.

“—so we can’t stay long, and neither can your prince. Quickly, Murphy.”

“My prince?” Murphy asked breathlessly, eyes darting from his parents to Bellamy’s body, still and gray. “How do you—“

“We always knew. Did you think we were teaching you to master illegal magic in the countryside because we were criminals?”

“A little, yeah,” Murphy gasped out. “You knew about the prophecy? You knew I was—“

“The _greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth_ ,” said his father, his grin stretching wide across his face. “I read anything I could get my hands on. Turns out the druids like to write. We put the pieces together.”

“You could’ve been wrong,” Murphy said, though every word was tilted by a near-sob. “You might have died for nothing.”

“My dear, we would have died for you no matter who you’d become. Before you are a fugitive, or an apprentice, or right hand to the prince, or the savior of magic— you are our son.”

It was a miracle Murphy had any tears left to cry.

“Now Murphy, do as I say,” insisted his father, staring resolutely at the dead prince, and the little rivers of blood streaked all across his gray skin. “The curse. Find the center of it.”

“Find the—?” Murphy trailed off, his hands trembling as they hovered over Bellamy’s body. His eyes were drawn to Bellamy’s slack face, where all the blood had poured from. He placed his hands over Bellamy’s ears, and felt suddenly lost. Did they know they’d come too late?

“He’s dead,” said Murphy, and his father ignored him.

“It’s a powerful curse, meaning it will be intricate, cast in many pieces rather than one continuous string. You’ll have to extract every piece, or it will spread again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” mumbled Murphy, staring at Bellamy’s closed, sunken eyes.

“Then cast a tracking spell.”

Murphy did, and silver shimmered all across the prince’s sallow skin, the curse broken apart through his veins, in his throat and behind his eyes.

It was like picking glass from ink. He took every shard of the curse into the gold tendrils of his magic, and carefully, surgically, drew them out. In the dying light of day before they burst apart into ash, they looked like black tourmaline.

It hurt, like the curse was cutting into his magic, and he shook all over. By the time he’d found the very last shard, a tiny little piece hidden beneath a single silver star, and destroyed it in his palm, he felt like he could have fallen down beside Bellamy and slept until they both sank into the ground and worms fed on their bones. Then he supposed he’d felt like doing that anyway.

“It’s gone,” his father said, awash with pride.

“He’s dead,” said Murphy, hooking his fingers in Bellamy’s mail. Frustrated tears sprang to his strained eyes. “Can’t you see he’s already dead? Why the hell am I doing this? Why the hell are you _here?_ I needed you sooner! I don’t need you now!”

“Try to trust us, darling. You may be all-powerful, but we’re still your parents,” said his mother, flicking her blue eyes sternly toward Bellamy’s chest. “Do you remember when I tried to teach you to heal? Do you remember what I said?”

“Healing comes from the heart,” Murphy muttered. “That’s why I could never do it.”

“And why’s that? You don’t have a heart?”

Murphy stared at Bellamy’s closed eyes. “…I have two.”

But Bellamy’s heart had stopped. He’d died at sunset, and it hadn’t beat since. The dark silence of his chest, and only Murphy’s lone heartbeat in his ears— it reminded him of when he’d gone beneath the floor, and shut down his body and locked his soul away, and all the while he could still hear Bellamy’s _thump thump, thump thump._

Bellamy, whose heart had kept the both of them alive, even when Murphy should have died, however temporarily. But Murphy was never dead, only waiting.

He looked to his mother, and she had a brow quirked as if to say, “I told you so.”

Murphy’s hands flew to Bellamy’s still chest, and he listened to the pound of his own heart like a band of horses’ hooves, storming toward the castle. He thought of Bellamy Blake’s big, brilliant heart, the steady thrumming sound of it. He thought of the stuttering pulse of it against Murphy’s chest as he held the crying prince in the stairwell, and as Bellamy wrestled him to the floor of his chambers and laid his body across Murphy’s, laughter fading as his eyes roamed all over Murphy’s face, and found a home on his lips. He thought of that heart not as it died, but as it lived: ferocious and brave and _strong._

_ Thump, thump. _

Murphy opened his eyes and found golden light gleaming from between chainmail rings, the ray ever-growing, blindingly bright.

_ Thump thump, thump thump. _

He didn’t have to wonder how to do it. His magic shot from his spread fingers, eager to thread life through those bones. It sped through Bellamy’s veins, and stretched all across his torn muscle and nicked skin, and curled gingerly around his organs, waking them up again. Bellamy flushed rapidly with color, gray turning copper, freckles blooming into sight all across his skin as if he were a dusted tome. Bellamy coughed, and a red thread of sickness unspooled from his throat, and Murphy pulled and pulled and pulled, winding it tight around his fists until his hands bled.

When the last of the thread fell from Bellamy’s mouth, Murphy stared at its frayed end. Then Bellamy opened his eyes, and the thread dissipated, turning to red dust between his fingers before fading from the world entirely.

He was alive. They were both alive.

“Show-off,” teased Murphy’s father, as peaceful as Murphy had ever seen him, thought the emerald light was steadily shrinking around them, the gate closing.

Murphy’s mouth hung open, his wet eyes searching theirs. He thought to tell them thank you, or tell them how much he’d missed them, and how he’d thought of them every day, when his father suddenly shook his head, slow and understanding.

“Don’t say goodbye. We’ll be together again, a long, long time from now,” said his mother, her own eyes welling up with tears. “So don’t say goodbye.”

So Murphy didn’t say goodbye, and stared at their faces until their illusions shimmered apart and they were ethereal, dancing streaks of light again. Then the gate finally closed, and the veil he’d torn five winters ago shrank until it was a sliver in the sky, and finally nothing, the wound healed at last.

With the roaring winds and the raging green light gone, it was quiet and dark upon the black hill. Under a soft ray of tentative moonlight, Bellamy woke up.

He stared at the darkening sky for some time, and then slowly got his elbows beneath him, lifting his shoulders from the ground. At last his brown eyes found Murphy’s, more crushingly beautiful now than they had ever seemed to Murphy before.

“Hi,” said the prince.

And Murphy started laughing, and then he was crying, and he couldn’t stop either. Bellamy reached out just to hold Murphy’s arm, a big, stupid grin on his face. Murphy fell closer, clutching Bellamy’s face between his hands. Dried blood flaked beneath his fingertips, revealing more and more of Bellamy’s skin. He stopped himself when their noses were nearly touching, looking into Bellamy’s heavy eyes.

“Can I kiss you now?” asked Murphy.

“I guess if there’s no getting around it,” whispered Bellamy, and Murphy didn’t give him a chance to grin, closing the breath between their lips.

For a moment, he let himself be painted by Murphy’s lips, pliant and still. But here, feeling it for himself, it didn’t feel like Murphy was pouring his love in. Bellamy was reverent, taking in every soft drag of Murphy’s lips like the chords of a slow song.

Murphy drew back to breathe, his stare darting all over Bellamy’s face. The shining trail of Murphy’s tear streaking through his freckles, the wine blush staining his cheeks, his dark, glittering eyes.

“I do love you,” he said, like Murphy had been wondering aloud all this time.

“Lucky me,” Murphy said dryly, though the trees shooting up around the clearing’s edges, the green grass stretching over the hills and crawling over the black debris of the cottage, and the calla lilies sprouting up for miles like little white bells in the moonlight belied his words.

“Lucky you,” Prince Bellamy whispered, tilting his chin up to retake Murphy’s lips again, and again, and again.


	13. thirteen

On the castle balcony overlooking the midsummer festival, King Bellamy was pretending to read a book.

Murphy shook his head, levitated his cryspe and shook a few cobblestones loose from the courtyard, building a bobbing staircase up to the balcony. Bellamy peeked up from his book to watch Murphy struggle his way up, growling as the stones playfully darted out from beneath his feet or flew apart to make him do the splits, as his magic was still wont to do.

“No rush, Murphy,” said the king, looking back to his book. “You’re only flashing the whole kingdom.”

Murphy rolled his eyes and demanded the stones to stay in place until he could walk the rest of the way up. Then he stepped onto the railing, hopped down in front of Bellamy, and nestled the stones back to their craters in the dirt. They’d spent too long putting this kingdom back together for Murphy to leave anything out of place.

The king snorted as Murphy self-consciously smoothed down his blue formal robes.

“You don’t have to wear those all the time.”  


“I like them,” Murphy said defensively, whipping his skirts with finality and taking his floating cryspe from the air. He held it out and wiggled it suggestively at Bellamy.  Bellamy looked at the greasy street food in disgust, and then closed his book and broke off a piece of the sugared batter in Murphy’s cloth anyway.

“What are you reading?” asked Murphy as they ate, looking out over the kingdom where visiting nobles and druids roamed, and citizens danced in the square.

His eyes found a familiar head of dirty, braided hair. He didn’t see her often, her search for her brother ongoing, but if there was a festival, Emori would be there. She swiped a necklace from a merchant’s booth, and he rolled his eyes and cast an invisibility charm as the merchant began chasing after her. The vague shape of a thumbs-up shimmered in the air before the bandit scurried off.

“Druid poetry,” answered Bellamy, looking oddly at the book. “There’s a lot of dark magic. And sex.”

Murphy grinned, and said as he so often did now, “Are you keeping an open mind, King Bellamy?”

“I am,” sighed Bellamy, thumping his fingers against the book’s unassuming cover, though the leather was engraved with a telling triskelion. “It’s better than military treatises, I’ll give you that.”

Bellamy read more since his mother had died. He was doing okay. After all, in every way that mattered she’d died nearly twelve moons ago, and he’d had time enough to say goodbye. She was with the last king now, and no longer suffering, and her violence and hatred had gone with her. And from all her ashes, a new world had risen.

Murphy smiled, watching Princess Octavia kneel by the fountain before a bouncing gaggle of children, and grow strawberries in her palms. A little girl picked one eagerly, and Octavia offered her a pleasant smile before she skipped away, showing the magic strawberry off to her mother. Raven’s hand snaked over Octavia’s shoulder and plucked another, and after she’d eaten it she paid an indignant Octavia with a sweet red peck on the lips.

It’d been hard to convince the witch they were remaking the world. Turned out she had to see it to believe it, and Bellamy was more than willing to show her.

Bellamy watched his sister with bright eyes. Sometimes things were still tense between them, when their mother was the topic of conversation, when they disagreed on policy, or when Octavia was accidentally called ‘Lady.’ On days when Bellamy’s eyes looked faraway, and Octavia became sick with guilt. But they were trying. They were healing.

The druids, a peaceful people, had spared her, saved her from Murphy's dagger that had long since found the bottom of the lake. They still couldn't quite look each other in the eyes, but he hoped one day they could forgive each other— for doing what they thought was right. Octavia sent a tentative smile his way from the fountain, and it was in moments like those that Murphy had faith they would.

His and Bellamy's gazes both travelled then to the knights, who chased the girls away by starting a wrestling match in the fountain, in which it looked like Miller was trying to drown Jasper, while Monty stood nearby and ate a meat pie. Bellamy barked out a laugh that surprised them both as Monroe, determined to be included in the boys' antics, took a running start and jumped on Finn’s back, toppling the both of them into the water.

Murphy knew Bellamy slept better at night knowing they would never have to go into battle, as their relations with the other twelve kingdoms were stronger than ever thanks to Arkadia’s contributions of the more magical variety to their collective well-being. He slept better at night, knowing he’d never have to order them to commit atrocities for him, like his mother had done. It was good to see people smile, and not be waiting on the day they stopped.

When the last of the cryspe was gone, Murphy folded up his cloth and disappeared it, just because he could. Bellamy rolled his eyes.

“Oh, am I alienating you, weird loner king who hides and reads books during his own festivals?”

“I’m keeping watch,” Bellamy argued petulantly.

“What for? Dragon attacks?”

Just then, a mass of black shot overhead, dragging its shadow over Murphy and Bellamy both. The dark shape disappeared behind the clouds, and after a quiet moment of fascinated awe from all the courtyard, Lexa burst from the clouds and swooped over the kingdom, and cheers went up from the crowd.

It had taken a truly moving speech from Lexa to the entire kingdom for Bellamy and the knights to allow her to live, let alone visit the kingdom from time to time. They decided to grant her mercy, as it was Arkadia’s fault she was the last of her kind, after all. Besides, who could stay mad at those green eyes?

Lexa did a barrel roll in the sky, and Murphy’s thought about how much Mbege would have loved that was swiftly cut short by the sight of a dot of gold on Lexa’s back.  Clarke held tightly to Lexa’s neck as they flew, laughing like the madwoman she was.

“Gods almighty,” murmured Bellamy.

Murphy had never been so happy in all his life.

“I want to dance,” he decided, looking to Bellamy. “Come join the festivities, if you think you can bear to part with your sexy, sexy book.” An embarrassed blush overtook Bellamy’s ears before the king smacked him in the chest.

“I can’t dance, I’ll look like an idiot.”

“I didn’t ask you to dance because I thought you'd look good doing it. In fact, just the opposite."

Bellamy turned an exasperated but fond look on Murphy, which was quite regular. “Well, I'm certainly not going to dance with you looking like that,” he said, rolling down the big sleeves of Murphy’s robe, and reaching up to straighten Murphy’s crooked silver circlet. “If you’re going to be my court sorcerer, you ought to try and look the part.”

Murphy smacked Bellamy’s hand away from his hair, but caught his fingers in the process and twined their hands together. “I’m off duty.”

“I don’t recall giving you the day.”

“I am _not_ polishing your boots or sharpening your damn sword. I earned my promotion. Get a real servant.”

Bellamy smiled at his mean tongue. “Not what I had in mind.”

“Yeah?” said Murphy. “Then what do you want, One True Jackass?”

“I want you to do something great, O greatest sorcerer.”

Murphy switched his eyes to Bellamy and quirked a brow. “You could stand to hire a bard, too.”

There it was again— that stupid smile. “Your little tricks are better.”

Murphy scoffed, yanking his hand away. “My little tricks,” he muttered, approaching the balcony railing and shaking out his hands, his ridiculous robe sleeves fluttering all around. “I’ll show you _little tricks.”_

In truth, he never got tired of this.

Murphy raised his hands and explosions blasted all across the darkening sky, lights flashing in every color with earth-shaking booms before scattering apart into stars. When the festival goers cheered rather than shying away, Murphy kept it going, grinning wide as children gasped and dancers paused, awed beneath his lights.

Then there were fingers on his chin, turning his head, and his smile was tangled up in Bellamy’s lips. The boom of the explosions shook him through, and their hearts thrummed in their chests. He tasted of sugar.

“They’ll see you,” Murphy whispered when they parted for a breath, searching Bellamy’s blazing eyes.

“I don’t care,” said Bellamy. “Fuck an heir. Fuck tradition. Fuck destiny. I’ve given them everything, but this is my life and I don’t want to do with it what they think is right. I want you to be my consort.”

Murphy’s heart skipped a beat. So did Bellamy’s.

“It’s men like you. Men who can’t accept the lot they were given,” teased Murphy, though he was nervous enough that he couldn’t help curling his fist in Bellamy’s tunic, holding tight.

The king grinned and shook his head, holding fiercely to either side of Murphy’s face like it had been eating at him. “Anything fate has planned for us, we were going to do anyway. Isn’t that how it goes? So, finally, _finally,_ let’s just do whatever the hell we want.”

Bellamy’s firewood eyes were sparking, and like it so often did, Murphy’s world shrank down to only him. “I want to kiss you again.”

“Then do it.”

So, destiny be damned, Murphy did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! you fucking read all this? what's wrong with you
> 
> thank you so much for giving this story your time and i hope it was worth it :) if you're feeling generous leave me a kudos (or a COMMENT !!! that would be cool) so i know... you know... that someone actually enjoyed all this??
> 
> as for 7.13 [spoilers?]: murphamies i am so sorry. you are an underrepresented casualty of this violence. despite everything, i don't intend to stop writing them, because i am an insane person who can't stop anything for my own good. fic, now, more than ever
> 
> finally, i just want to give a little kiss to fellow murphamy writers [sapphictomaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz) and [oogaboogu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogaboogu) for encouraging me so much while i was working on this big hunk of junk and fearing for my sanity. their stories are brilliant and if you don't read them i'll actually kill you
> 
> once again, thanks so much for sticking through to the end. kind of busted my ass for this one and so did you, so i hope it was a decent read. :) love you much, come see me mourning on twitter @slugcities
> 
> -charlie ☆


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